The name changes, and so does the license
Drive north out of Wind River Canyon on U.S. 20 and the river you have been following stops being the Wind at a spot called the Wedding of the Waters, about five miles south of Thermopolis. Upstream of that point, in the canyon, the water belongs to the Wind River Indian Reservation and you need a tribal fishing permit, fishing only from the east bank. Downstream it is the Bighorn, it is Wyoming Game and Fish water in Drainage Area 2, and an ordinary Wyoming license covers you. The Thermopolis outfitters sell both, so settle which side of that line you plan to fish before you pay.
Game and Fish bought the 12-acre Wedding of the Waters access in January 1990 and in 2016 added about 22,500 square feet of gravel parking after trucks and trailers kept spilling onto the highway shoulder. It has a boat ramp, dock and toilet, and it is where most drift boats start. The river then runs through Thermopolis past Hot Springs State Park, where the suspension footbridge locals call the Swinging Bridge crosses over, and the park itself has a boat ramp and allows fishing.
Easement stops from Thermopolis to Skelton
Much of the Bighorn below town is bordered by private land, so the public water is a chain of small Game and Fish easements off Highway 20, all open year round and managed from the Cody office (307-527-7125). Going downstream: WYDOT access in Thermopolis; Kirby Ditch, four miles north, with a ramp; McCarthy at five miles; Wakely at six, with a ramp and toilet; Longwell at seven, with a ramp, and Shafer at seven, with a toilet; Murillo at eight; Skelton at nine, with a ramp and toilet; and Sorensen at ten. None is bigger than two acres.
On most of these the easement runs from midstream out to 100 feet above the high-water line, so a wader can move along the bank but not wander into the fields, and rifles and pistols are banned. The spacing is what makes the float work: Wind River Canyon Whitewater and Fly Fishing runs vehicle shuttles for $25 to $35 depending on the takeout, and a short float between two ramps leaves time to anchor and fish the long flats slowly.
Reading 06274300 when Boysen sets the flow
The gauge on this page is at Basin, well downstream of the trout water past Worland, and it adds and subtracts things the Thermopolis reach never sees. What reaches town is essentially the release from Boysen Dam, which Reclamation posts daily on its Boysen current-data page. Below town the river picks up tributaries such as Owl Creek and Kirby Creek, and in summer irrigation canals pull water out. The difference is large. In August 2026 Boysen released between 974 and 1,077 cfs every day, averaging 1,033, while the Basin gauge ran between 395 and 701; on August 11 the dam put out 1,060 cfs and Basin read 395. In September the two numbers came back close, and after rain on September 20 Basin briefly topped the release.
No shop publishes a wading band for the Basin gauge, so the 1015-1500 cfs range here comes from its long-term USGS monthly means: 1,015 in August, 1,120 in September, 1,384 in October and 1,500 in April, the months people fish. June averages 4,140. Treat any summer Basin number as a floor and check the Boysen release. North Fork Anglers in Cody called the fishing steady at 911 cfs in mid September 2026, a figure that matches the dam, not Basin. Each spring Game and Fish asks Reclamation for a flushing flow to clean spawning gravel; in April 2023 the release went from 1,100 to 5,000 cfs for ten hours, and the agency warned that water you can wade at the base flow may be out of reach at the peak.
What the Cody fisheries crew has counted
Game and Fish manages this tailwater to an objective of 1,000 trout over 12 inches per mile. Its biologists credit regular flushing flows, put on a schedule in 2009, for a boom that took estimates to between 2,100 and 3,000 fish per mile, up from lows near 600 in the dry 2000s. High, erratic water in 2015 to 2017 then knocked out young fish, and the 2018 estimate was 1,623 trout per mile, 665 of them over 12 inches. The same survey found stocked fish growing an inch a month.
The river is supplemented with about 16,000 six-inch rainbows and 8,000 Snake River cutthroat a year, stocked at four spots between the Wedding of the Waters and Skelton, about 20 miles of river. Browns are not on the stocking list. Below the trout water the easements list burbot, and the walk-in areas farther down toward Basin list channel catfish, sauger and shovelnose sturgeon, which tells you where the cold-water fishery gives out.
Area 2 limits, hot summers and live bait
There is no special-regulation section on the Wyoming Bighorn. The Area 2 stream limit applies: three trout a day, only one over 16 inches, six trout combined across streams and lakes, plus 16 brook trout and 6 whitefish under statewide rules. Fishing is open all year, 24 hours a day. Unlike most of Area 2, the Bighorn River is a listed Location A water where live baitfish from a licensed dealer are legal, and walleye and sauger kept from Bighorn drainage waters must stay whole until you are off the water for the day. A nonresident license is $14 a day, $56 for five days or $102 a year plus a $21.50 conservation stamp; residents pay $6 a day or $27 a year.
Heat matters more than any rule. Game and Fish asked anglers to stop catch-and-release fishing on the Bighorn in early August 2026 as water warmed, and lifted that request on September 11. Its standing advice is to carry a thermometer, keep fish at 65 degrees and quit releasing them at 70.
Olives, midges and the late Trico
Four Seasons Anglers in Laramie, which books two-day Bighorn trips out of Thermopolis, describes heavy Blue-Winged Olive and midge hatches in late spring and Tricos from late summer into fall, with sow bugs, RS2s and Ray Charles patterns on its current list. North Fork Anglers' September 2026 report had heads up for Tricos and Pale Morning Duns in the morning, hopper-dropper rigs working the riffles, and sow bugs, perdigons and Sculpzilla streamers in the box. Wind River Canyon Whitewater warns that winter weather limits fishing from November 15 to March 15, and prices April 11 through October 31 as its high season.