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Home › Waters › Wyoming › Gibbon River
River · Northwestern Wyoming, Yellowstone National Park, the meadows and canyon above Madison Junction · Wyoming

Gibbon River Fishing Guides

A small Yellowstone river of meadow pools and canyon pocket water that joins the Firehole to form the Madison.

A clear river pool below pines and broken rock in the Rockies

Map of the Gibbon River

24 numbered points: 9 access points, 6 campsites, 2 bridges, 1 regulation section limit, 3 hazards, 2 springs, 1 USGS gauge. Tap a marker for details. Reviewed Sep 23, 2026.

Printable version →
  • Access / boat ramp (9)
  • Campsite (6)
  • Bridge crossing (2)
  • Regulation section limit (1)
  • Dam / hazard (3)
  • Spring (2)
  • USGS gauge (1)
Map data © OpenStreetMap contributors. Points are curated from OpenStreetMap and state agency sources; confirm access and hours before you go.

Print it. Bag it. Bring it.Phones die, screens crack, and most of this water has no signal. Print this map, fold it into a zip-top bag or dry bag with your license, and you have a backup your electronics can’t give you. Every marker is numbered so you can say exactly where you are.

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All 24 points on this map
#PointTypeLat, LonNotes
1Grebe Lake Outlet
Yellowstone NP backcountry site		Campsite44.75365, -110.56435Designated site at the outlet of Grebe Lake, the Gibbon's source. Four designated sites ring the lake; this is the one on the outlet. Permit required.
2Wolf Lake
Yellowstone NP backcountry site		Campsite44.74549, -110.58104Designated backcountry site; a park backcountry permit is required and sites are reserved. Walk-in only.
3Wolf Lake Outlet
Yellowstone NP backcountry site		Campsite44.74340, -110.58588Designated backcountry site; a park backcountry permit is required and sites are reserved. Walk-in only.
4Ice Lake East
Yellowstone NP backcountry site		Campsite44.72204, -110.62032Designated site on Ice Lake, 220 m off the Gibbon. Ice Lake has four sites; the other three sit 780 m to 1.04 km off the river. Permit required.
5Virginia Cascades Picnic Area
NPS picnic area		Access / boat ramp44.71441, -110.63458Picnic area on the one-way Virginia Cascade Drive, above the cascade.
6Virginia Cascades
Waterfall on the Gibbon		Dam / hazard44.71308, -110.64776A 60-foot fall on the upper river beside the one-way drive. Not wadeable.
7Norris Meadows Picnic Area
NPS picnic area		Access / boat ramp44.73102, -110.68931Picnic area on the meadow reach above Norris; slow, silty water and undercut banks.
8Norris Campground
NPS campground		Campsite44.73824, -110.69319The developed campground above the Norris bridge, 180 m from the river.
9Grand Loop Road bridge at the Norris Campground entrance
Regulation section limit		Regulation section limit44.73815, -110.69880Upstream end of the reach the park gives an extended season. The park's web page calls it the bridge at the campground entrance; the 2026 booklet calls it the bridge near the Museum of the National Park Ranger.
10Gibbon River Rapids
Rapids		Dam / hazard44.71196, -110.73687Mapped rapids on the reach below Norris.
11Chocolate Pot
Thermal feature on the bank		Spring44.71010, -110.74124An iron-stained hot spring cone right on the Gibbon's bank below Norris; mapped in OSM as two adjacent nodes, one point here.
12Gibbon Meadows Picnic Area
NPS picnic area		Access / boat ramp44.70608, -110.74572Picnic area on the Gibbon Meadows reach.
13Artists Paintpots parking
NPS parking		Access / boat ramp44.69642, -110.74133Roadside lot for the Artists Paintpots trail, 260 m from the river; the nearest parking on this reach.
14Grand Loop Road bridge above Beryl Spring
Road crossing		Bridge crossing44.68405, -110.74438Crossing between Artists Paintpots and Beryl Spring. Grand Loop Road crosses the Gibbon five times; a third crossing 1.4 km downstream of here is left off the sheet as the least distinctive of the three in the canyon.
15Beryl Spring
Thermal feature on the bank		Spring44.67869, -110.74654A large boiling spring on the roadside at the river, with a road bridge 20 m away; one point here.
16Caldera Rim Picnic Area
NPS picnic area		Access / boat ramp44.65947, -110.74979Picnic area on the canyon reach above Gibbon Falls.
17Iron Springs Picnic Area
NPS picnic area		Access / boat ramp44.65970, -110.76794Picnic area on the canyon reach above Gibbon Falls.
18Grand Loop Road bridge above Gibbon Falls
Road crossing		Bridge crossing44.65752, -110.76946The last crossing upstream of the falls; a wade-in point for the reach above the lip.
19Gibbon Falls
Waterfall on the Gibbon		Dam / hazard44.65402, -110.77075An 84-foot fall, and the park's dividing point on this river: the water below it is managed differently from the water above. Do not wade near the lip.
20Gibbon Falls Picnic Area
NPS picnic area		Access / boat ramp44.64853, -110.77367Picnic area just below the falls.
21Tuff Cliffs Picnic Area
NPS picnic area		Access / boat ramp44.65062, -110.82944Picnic area on the lower canyon reach.
22Madison Junction Picnic Area
NPS picnic area		Access / boat ramp44.64356, -110.86042Picnic area at the Firehole confluence, where the Gibbon ends and the Madison begins.
23Gibbon River at Madison Junction
USGS 06037100		USGS gauge44.64080, -110.86106Real-time flow at the mouth. The OSM monitoring-station node sits on the roster coordinate. A Tantalus Creek station 12 km upstream is on a tributary, not this river, and is not shown.
24Madison Campground
NPS campground, Madison Junction		Campsite44.64445, -110.86614The developed campground at the mouth; reservable. Serves the lower Gibbon, the lower Firehole and the upper Madison.

Guides on the Gibbon River

Claimed profiles take booking requests. Unclaimed profiles are built from public records so the river is never empty; the guide can claim or remove one any time.

Order on this page: premium and outfitter plans first (labelled Premium placement), then claimed free profiles, then unclaimed — one published price, no bidding for position. How placement works

About the Gibbon River

The Gibbon River drains a hundred and twenty-five square miles of the Yellowstone plateau before it meets the Firehole at Madison Junction, and the two together become the Madison River. It is a small river by any measure, and it changes character several times over a short distance, which is what makes it interesting to fish. The upper reaches run through Gibbon Meadows and Elk Park as slow, undercut meadow water. Below that it drops through a canyon of broken pocket water and falls, and the last mile before the junction flattens out again.

Each of those reaches fishes differently and holds different fish. The meadows hold brown trout and rainbows that behave like spring creek fish, spooky in the low clear water of late summer and best approached with a long leader from a crouch. The canyon is brook trout and small rainbow water, fished with a short line and an attractor dry, and it is forgiving in a way the meadows are not. Arctic grayling are present in the upper river, one of the few places in the lower forty-eight where they can be caught in moving water.

The autumn run is the reason many anglers know the Gibbon at all. Brown trout and rainbows push up out of Hebgen Lake and the Madison in September and October, and they run well into the lower Gibbon. Those fish are considerably larger than the resident trout, and the lower river gets busy when they arrive.

Access is easy because the Grand Loop Road follows the river for most of its length. That also means the water near the road sees steady pressure through the summer. Walking even a short distance from a pullout changes the fishing noticeably, and the meadow reaches reward anyone willing to work upstream quietly.

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Reader photo license v1.0 — the short version:

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  • Withdrawing is one email to hello@guidedfloats.com naming the photo. It comes off the site within 7 days.
Read the full license

Version 1.0, dated 6 September 2026. Applies to every photograph submitted to GuidedFloats through the contact form, a species page, or the community board.

1. What you give us

By ticking the box on the form you grant Guided Floats, LLC (“GuidedFloats”, “we”) a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free license to store, copy, resize, crop and display your photograph on guidedfloats.com, in GuidedFloats’ own social media accounts and mobile apps, and in material that promotes the site itself, in connection with the fish, water or community feature you sent it in for. The license lasts until you withdraw it (section 4).

You keep the copyright. The license is not exclusive, so you can use the photo anywhere else and license it to anyone else. We will not sell your photo, license it on to anyone else on its own, or use it in paid advertising for a third party.

2. What you confirm

You confirm that you took the photograph yourself (or otherwise own the rights to it), that you have the right to grant this license, and that publishing the photo does not infringe anyone else’s copyright, privacy or other rights.

If any person is recognisable in the photo, you confirm that they have agreed to its being published here, and that a parent or guardian has agreed on behalf of anyone under 18. Please do not send photographs of other people’s catches, screenshots, or pictures copied from other websites or social media.

3. Credit

We print the credit name you give us beside the photo wherever it appears on the site, and record it as the photo’s creator in the page’s structured data. If you leave the credit blank we use the name you gave us on the form. Write “Anonymous” if you prefer no name at all. Your email address, phone number and the exact spot the photo was taken are never published.

4. Withdrawing the license

You can withdraw the license at any time by emailing hello@guidedfloats.com, or by using the contact form, and telling us which photo you mean. We will remove the photo from guidedfloats.com within 7 days of receiving your message and stop using it in anything new. Copies that are already outside our control — search-engine caches, social posts that have already gone out, printed material already produced — may take longer to disappear or may not be recallable, and we are not responsible for those.

5. What we may do

We choose which photos to publish and may decline any submission without giving a reason. We may crop, resize, sharpen or colour-correct a photo for display, and we may remove a photo at any time. We will not alter a photo in a way that misrepresents the fish, the water or you.

6. Your details

We keep your name, email address, the credit name, the water and date you gave us, and the network address the submission came from, with the submission record, as our evidence of this license. We hold that record for as long as the photo is published and for the retention period described in our privacy policy. Location data that your camera or phone embedded in the file is removed before the photo is published.

7. Versions

The version of this license you accepted is stored with your submission and printed with the photo. A later version does not apply to a photo you have already sent unless you agree to it.

Flow alert

Tell me when the Gibbon River cfs

Now: 90.2 cfs, read 7:00 am CST, Mon Nov 2, 2026 (USGS 06037100, Gibbon River at Madison Jct, YNP).

We never use this address for anything else and never share it. See the privacy policy.

Access

Madison Junction - the gauge reach at the confluence with the Firehole, with campground and road access.
Gibbon Falls - the canyon water above and below the falls, reached from the road pullouts.
Gibbon Meadows - slow undercut meadow water with a pullout and an open walk to the bank.
Elk Park - the upper meadow reach, quieter than Gibbon Meadows and reached on foot.
Norris Junction - the top of the fishable river near the Norris Geyser Basin.
Grand Loop Road pullouts - repeated roadside access through the canyon reach.
Terrace Springs - the lowest thermal input above the junction, a short walk from the road.

Seasons

Spring: high and cold from snowmelt, with the meadows fishing first as the water drops.
Summer: good dry fly fishing in the canyon, with the meadows demanding a careful approach.
Fall: the run of brown trout and rainbows out of the Madison makes this the peak season.
Winter: closed to fishing within the park for the season.

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Questions

What is the current flow on the Gibbon River?

As of Nov 2, 7:00 am, the USGS gauge Gibbon River at Madison Jct, YNP reads 90 cfs, with water temperature 49.1 F. Conditions update every 15 minutes.

What species can you catch on the Gibbon River?

Anglers target Arctic Grayling, Brook Trout, Brown Trout, Mountain Whitefish, Rainbow Trout on the Gibbon River in Wyoming.

Are there fishing guides on the Gibbon River?

GuidedFloats lists 2 guides and outfitters on the Gibbon River. Claimed profiles accept booking requests; unclaimed profiles are built from public records and link to the business.

Where can you access the Gibbon River?

Madison Junction - the gauge reach at the confluence with the Firehole, with campground and road access. Gibbon Falls - the canyon water above and below the falls, reached from the road pullouts. Gibbon Meadows - slow undercut meadow water with a pullout and an open walk to the bank. Elk Park - the upper meadow reach, quieter than Gibbon Meadows and reached on foot. Norris Junction - the top of the fishable river near the Norris Geyser Basin. Grand Loop Road pullouts - repeated roadside access through the canyon reach. Terrace Springs - the lowest thermal input above the junction, a short walk...

When is the best time to fish the Gibbon River?

Spring: high and cold from snowmelt, with the meadows fishing first as the water drops. Summer: good dry fly fishing in the canyon, with the meadows demanding a careful approach. Fall: the run of brown trout and rainbows out of the Madison makes this the peak season. Winter: closed to fishing within the park for the season.

Where are the fishing regulations for the Gibbon River?

Regulations change by season and section. Read the current rules on the Wyoming agency site: https://wgfd.wyo.gov/regulations