H-Two-Oh

Fishing Cone, Summer 2001

Fishing Cone
West Thumb Geyser Basin
Yellowstone National Park
Back in the Day, western adventurers told whimsical tales of a lake where freshly caught fish could be dunked into a hot spring and cooked on the hook.  A member of the 1870 Washburn Expedition, one Walter Trumbull, describes the origins of this fascinating angling-cum-culinary process: A gentleman was fishing from one of the narrow... shelves of rock, which divided one of these hot springs from the lake, when, in swinging a trout ashore, it accidentally got off the hook and fell into the spring. For a moment it darted about with wonderful rapidity, as if seeking an outlet.  Then it came to the top, dead, and literally boiled.  It died within a minute of the time it fell into the spring.

Back in the Day, Montana Historical Society

Imagine that!  We do, in fact, imagine that every time we visit Fishing Cone, an off-shore geothermal feature at the West Thumb Geyser Basin. 

Fishing Cone, Lake Yellowstone, Summer 2013

Fishing Cone, Summer 1998

H-Two-Oh, that's interesting.
Back in the Day again, Fishing Cone produced eruptions of nearly forty gastronomical feet.  Over time, Lake Yellowstone’s average water level has risen, fluctuating seasonally, and temperatures inside the cone have fallen, dropping below optimum fish-boiling levels.  Consequently, the piquant little geyser now functions as a photogenic hot spring.  Cooking on the hook was outlawed in 1929—too much economy of motion, perhaps, and too much crazy national park fun.  Too bad for us, but it’s still fascinating and lovely to take a look at Fishing Cone-- minus the cook and without the hook. 

Fishing Cone Submerged, Summer 2003