Four state sites between Chance Road and East Broadway
Start at Chance Road. Montana FWP's Weymiller Fishing Access Site is 8.3 miles south of Belfry: turn west on Chance Road, cross the river, go 0.3 mile and the entrance is on the left. It is 5 acres at 3,977 feet, open January 1 to December 31, with camping and no boat facilities, and it is the first state access you reach after the river comes back into Montana from Wyoming. Bridger Bend, 3 miles south of Belfry on Montana 72, is an undeveloped 12-acre site with no facilities that FWP rates as most difficult for accessibility. Between them you have the upper Montana reach, which is the water the Belfry gauge reads.
Downstream near Bridger are the other two. The Clarks Fork Yellowstone site, about 2 miles south of town on Highway 72, is the big one at 176.6 acres, with trailer parking, camping and a 150-yard firearms closure along its northern boundary to Ridgeway Drive. Bridger FAS is 2.9 acres half a mile east of town on East Broadway, and its gravel ramp is the only ramp on the Clarks Fork in FWP's access list. FWP's access map shows no other state site on the river, so these four sites set the pattern for a trip here: wade from Weymiller and Bridger Bend, or put in at Bridger when the water is up and float.
Upstream in Wyoming: the canyon and its fly-and-lure rule
The Clarks Fork rises in the Beartooth Mountains about 4 miles northeast of Cooke City, drops southeast into Wyoming's Shoshone National Forest, and turns northeast back into Montana. Congress added it to the Wild and Scenic Rivers system in 1990, and 20.5 miles in Park County, Wyoming are designated Wild, from just below the Highway 296 bridge to near the west end of Canyon Road. Wyoming Game and Fish manages the river for native Yellowstone cutthroat. Its Clark and Hatchery Bridge access easements, about 40 miles north of Cody near the state line, run from midstream to 50 feet beyond the high-water line on each bank, and the Clark Canyon unit covers 2,883.4 acres.
Wyoming rules are different. The river sits in Area 2, where the stream limit is three trout with no more than one over 16 inches. From the Wyoming/Montana state line downstream to the Shoshone National Forest boundary at the mouth of the canyon, only artificial flies and lures are allowed. Sunlight Sports in Cody describes the canyon bottoms as some of the best and hardest to reach fishing in the state; its Lower Dead Indian trail starts 20 miles up Highway 296 from the Highway 120 junction and reaches the river 4.4 miles from the trailhead. North Fork Anglers in Cody reports on the upper river and on Sunlight and Crandall creeks separately from the lower river near Belfry.
What changes at the bridge at Bridger
In Montana the whole river falls in FWP's Central Fishing District, so the district standard applies from the state line to the Yellowstone: open all year, combined trout 3 daily and in possession, only 1 over 18 inches and only 1 cutthroat. The river gets one listed exception in the 2026 regulations, and it begins at the bridge at Bridger. Downstream of that bridge, on the mainstem only, you may fish 2 lines with 2 hooks per line all year.
The same bridge is the line for live bait. The Clarks Fork and its tributaries below the Bridger bridge, except the Rock Creek drainage, are on the short Central District list of waters where you may use live nongame bait fish. Only fathead minnow, flathead chub, western silvery minnow, plains minnow, emerald shiner, longnose dace, lake chub, creek chub, longnose sucker and white sucker qualify, and FWP says any bait fish you cannot positively identify should not be used. Above Bridger, including the water at Weymiller and Bridger Bend, the plain district rules are all there is.
Belfry at mile 69, Edgar at mile 22
FWP places the Belfry gauge, USGS 06207500, at river mile 69 and the Edgar gauge, 06208500, at mile 22. Belfry drains 1,153 square miles and Edgar 2,045, so Edgar always reads bigger: on the afternoon of September 24, 2026 Belfry showed 104 cfs and Edgar 340. This page uses Belfry because it sits on the reach with Weymiller and Bridger Bend, and because it is the number North Fork Anglers quotes for the lower Clarks Fork. On September 17, 2026 the shop had it at 111 cfs, clear, and suggested hoppers over jigged attractor nymphs and a streamer through the deeper runs.
No shop publishes a wading range for this gauge, so the 147 to 436 cfs band on this page comes from the USGS record since 1921. Those are the 25th and 75th percentile daily flows between September 1 and October 15, the season a wading angler plans around here. Runoff dwarfs it: the long-term mean is 4,216 cfs in June and 2,177 in July, and August still averages 579 before September falls to 299 and October to 282. If Belfry reads well above the band in late summer, expect a fresh rain pulse rather than a normal day.
Cutthroat on the list, catfish near the mouth
FWP's species list for the Montana river runs from coldwater fish at the top to warmwater fish near the Yellowstone: brown, rainbow, brook and Yellowstone cutthroat trout, mountain whitefish, Arctic grayling and burbot, then channel catfish, walleye, smallmouth bass, goldeye, carp and shorthead redhorse. The last trout plants FWP lists are rainbows from the Bluewater Springs Trout Hatchery in 1965. FWP's pressure estimates are modest: 2,504 angler days in 2021 on the lowest 41.68 miles, and 4,779 in 2020 from mile 41.68 to 70.86, the stretch that includes the Belfry gauge.
No shop publishes a hatch chart for the Clarks Fork, so the calendar here borrows Montana Angler's chart for the Stillwater, a Beartooth freestone to the west, and checks it against North Fork Anglers' fly lists for the lower river: yellow sallies, golden stones, caddis and PMDs, then hoppers late in the season. By that chart blue-winged olives open and close the year, caddis build from the Mother's Day hatch into August, golden stones and yellow sallies show from mid-June into July, PMDs run late June through July, and hoppers, ants and beetles carry things from mid-July into early September.