New Fork River, Wyoming

New Fork Lakes to Pinedale

The New Fork leaves New Fork Lakes at the foot of the Wind River Range about 24 miles north of Pinedale, picks up Willow Creek and Pine Creek, and runs through private ranch land almost as soon as it leaves the Bridger-Teton National Forest. It is too small to float until it nears Pinedale, so the upper river is mostly a permission-only wade fishery.

Pinedale to Boulder Bridge

Public water starts in town at Boyd Skinner Park, then the WGFD Mesa Bridge access two miles south of Pinedale off South Tyler Street. The Boulder Bridge public access area, 11 miles south of Pinedale on Paradise Road, has a ramp and trailer parking and is the standard take-out for the roughly 11 mile float from Pinedale. Old ranch bridges sit low over the water on this river, so guides run rafts and low-profile boats rather than drift boats, and you stay in the boat through the private stretches.

Boulder Bridge to the Green River

Below Boulder Bridge the East Fork comes in at the WGFD East Fork confluence access south of Boulder, the Gas Wells access opens about two miles of public bank, and the Remmick access sits just above the Highway 351 bridge. The New Fork joins the Green River a few miles east of Big Piney just below Highway 351, which is where the USGS gauge this page uses sits.

Brown trout

Wild browns are the main event and the reason the New Fork draws float anglers from Jackson and Pinedale. They hold in the undercut sod banks, deep bends and bridge pilings of the ranch water, take gray drakes and golden stones in July, hoppers from late July into September, and turn on streamers as they stage to spawn in October.

Rainbow trout

Rainbows share the river with the browns and are the more willing dry fly fish during the PMD and caddis hatches of June and July and the Trico mornings of August and early September. An occasional cutthroat turns up, but this is a brown and rainbow river, not a cutthroat stream.

Season and regulations

The river fishes from the end of runoff in late June through October. Pinedale outfitters call 250 to 500 cfs at the Big Piney gauge the ideal window, 100 to 250 cfs low but fishable, and anything over 800 cfs runoff, so 250 to 500 cfs is what this page compares the gauge against. In hot spells Wyoming Game and Fish has asked anglers to stop fishing in the afternoons when water temperatures approach 70 degrees, as it did in August 2026, so carry a thermometer.

Wyoming law makes the water public but not the banks or bed, so wading and anchoring are only legal on the public access areas and public land. Statewide Wyoming creel limits and license rules apply; check the current WGFD regulations for the Green River drainage before you go.