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Home › Waters › Wyoming › Shoshone River
River · Bighorn Basin · Wyoming

Shoshone River Fishing Guides

Cody's home river, running out of the Absarokas through Buffalo Bill Reservoir and down the Bighorn Basin, with a tailwater reach that fishes when the rest of Wyoming is frozen or flooded.

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

Map of the Shoshone River

10 numbered points: 3 campsites, 2 parks and conservation areas, 1 agency office, 3 hazards, 1 USGS gauge. Tap a marker for details. Reviewed Sep 15, 2026.

Printable version →
  • Campsite (3)
  • Park / conservation area (2)
  • Agency / conservation office (1)
  • Dam / hazard (3)
  • 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.

Open the printable map
All 10 points on this map
#PointTypeLat, LonNotes
1Buffalo Bill Dam
Bureau of Reclamation		Dam / hazard44.50147, -109.18324Upstream limit of the reach; releases here set the flow through Cody.
2Wapiti Ranger District
Shoshone National Forest		Agency / conservation office44.51623, -109.09473
3Parkway RV Campground
Cody · private RV park		Campsite44.51487, -109.09410
4River View Park
Cody · riverside park		Park / conservation area44.53105, -109.07089The one Cody city park actually on the bank; the rest of the town ladder sits back from the water.
5Cody Trout Ranch Camp - RV & Tipi Park
Below Cody · private camp		Campsite44.57038, -108.98297
6Corbett Dam
Irrigation diversion		Dam / hazard44.58893, -108.95435
7Willwood Diversion Dam
Irrigation diversion		Dam / hazard44.67152, -108.90974
8Byron Memorial Park
Byron · town park		Park / conservation area44.79614, -108.50043
9USGS 06285100 — Shoshone River near Lovell
USGS streamgage		USGS gauge44.83853, -108.43518
10Lovell Camper Park
Lovell · town camper park		Campsite44.84167, -108.38369Near the Shoshone's arm of Bighorn Lake, the downstream limit of the reach.

Guides on the Shoshone 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.

About the Shoshone River

The Shoshone forms where the North Fork and South Fork meet above Buffalo Bill Reservoir and runs east past Cody, through the Shoshone Canyon and out across the Bighorn Basin to Lovell and the Bighorn River. Anglers use it in three different ways. The North Fork above the reservoir, along the highway to Yellowstone’s east entrance, is a freestone cutthroat and rainbow stream. The reach below Buffalo Bill Dam through Cody is a tailwater with browns and rainbows that fishes all winter. The lower river through the basin is warmer, bigger, and holds a mix of trout, whitefish and walleye.

The tailwater below the dam is the reason Cody has fishing guides. Cold releases keep the river open in January, the browns run large, and the DeMaris Springs area adds mineral-rich inflow that keeps the water temperature stable. Below town the river drops through a series of diversions and irrigation returns that make the middle reaches unpredictable in summer, then settles into the long, slower water above Lovell where this gauge sits.

Read the Lovell number as a basin-scale reading rather than a tailwater one; it includes irrigation return flows and tributary input from below Cody. Generally, moderate flows in the several-hundred to low-thousand cfs range fish well, spring runoff and irrigation releases can push it far higher and off-color, and the clearest, most consistent water in any month is up in the tailwater.

Cody has everything: lodging, shops, an airport and a genuine tourist economy built on Yellowstone traffic. That makes it the easiest Wyoming trout town to get to and the easiest to book late.

This water needs a real photo

The photo at the top of this page is not Shoshone River.

It is a regional stand-in, honestly captioned but generic — we will not put a name to a river we cannot prove. Send us a photograph you took here and it replaces the stand-in, with your credit on it.

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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.

Fished this water? Add a photo

Reviewed by hand before it appears. Pick the water, not the spot — we never publish exact locations.

Never published. We use it only if we need to ask about the photo.

Posting to Shoshone River.

JPG, PNG or WebP, up to 12 MB. We resize it and strip the location data out of the file.

The name shown under the photo. Leave blank to stay anonymous.

Reader photo license v1.0 — the short version:

  • You grant Guided Floats, LLC a non-exclusive, royalty-free license to publish, resize and crop your photo on guidedfloats.com and in GuidedFloats’ own social posts and apps. You keep the copyright and can use the photo anywhere else.
  • You confirm that you took the photo yourself, that publishing it does not infringe anyone else’s rights, and that anyone recognisable in it (or a parent or guardian, if they are under 18) is happy for it to appear here.
  • Credit is printed beside the photo wherever it appears on the site, using the credit name you give us. Leave it blank and we use your name; write “Anonymous” for no name. Your email address is never published.
  • 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 Shoshone River cfs

Now: 663 cfs, read 3:00 am CDT, Mon Oct 19, 2026 (USGS 06285100, SHOSHONE RIVER NEAR LOVELL, WY).

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

Access

North Fork Highway (US 14/16/20): pullouts and Shoshone National Forest access above Buffalo Bill Reservoir.
Buffalo Bill State Park: reservoir access and the top of the tailwater.
Shoshone Canyon and DeMaris Springs: walk-in tailwater access just west of Cody.
Cody river accesses along the highway east of town: wade and small-boat access to the tailwater.
Willwood and Byron area accesses: lower basin reaches with irrigation influence.
Lovell area: access near the gauge above the Bighorn confluence and Bighorn Canyon.

Seasons

Year-round on the tailwater below Buffalo Bill Dam; winter is a genuine season here.
March through May: strong pre-runoff fishing, then high, dirty water on the forks.
June and July: runoff and irrigation swings; the tailwater stays the reliable option.
August through November: clearing water basin-wide, hoppers late summer, brown trout in October.

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Questions

What is the current flow on the Shoshone River?

As of Oct 19, 3:00 am, the USGS gauge SHOSHONE RIVER NEAR LOVELL, WY reads 663 cfs, the 39th percentile for this date, with water temperature 51.4 F. Conditions update every 15 minutes.

What species can you catch on the Shoshone River?

Anglers target Brown Trout, Cutthroat Trout, Mountain Whitefish, Rainbow Trout, Walleye on the Shoshone River in Wyoming.

Are there fishing guides on the Shoshone River?

GuidedFloats lists 1 guide and outfitters on the Shoshone River. Claimed profiles accept booking requests; unclaimed profiles are built from public records and link to the business.

Where can you access the Shoshone River?

North Fork Highway (US 14/16/20): pullouts and Shoshone National Forest access above Buffalo Bill Reservoir. Buffalo Bill State Park: reservoir access and the top of the tailwater. Shoshone Canyon and DeMaris Springs: walk-in tailwater access just west of Cody. Cody river accesses along the highway east of town: wade and small-boat access to the tailwater. Willwood and Byron area accesses: lower basin reaches with irrigation influence. Lovell area: access near the gauge above the Bighorn confluence and Bighorn Canyon.

When is the best time to fish the Shoshone River?

Year-round on the tailwater below Buffalo Bill Dam; winter is a genuine season here. March through May: strong pre-runoff fishing, then high, dirty water on the forks. June and July: runoff and irrigation swings; the tailwater stays the reliable option. August through November: clearing water basin-wide, hoppers late summer, brown trout in October.

Where are the fishing regulations for the Shoshone River?

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