Bighorn Lake is a

reservoir A reservoir (; from French ''réservoir'' ) is an enlarged lake behind a dam. Such a dam may be either artificial, built to store fresh water or it may be a natural formation. Reservoirs can be created in a number of ways, including contro ...

behind Yellowtail Dam within the

Bighorn Canyon National Recreation Area Bighorn Canyon National Recreation Area is a national recreation area established by an act of Congress on October 15, 1966, following the construction of the Yellowtail Dam by the Bureau of Reclamation. It straddles the border between Wyoming ...

, located in northern

Wyoming Wyoming () is a state in the Mountain West subregion of the Western United States. It is bordered by Montana to the north and northwest, South Dakota and Nebraska to the east, Idaho to the west, Utah to the southwest, and Colorado to the s ...

and extending into southern Montana.

Geography

The reservoir is 40 mi (64 km) south of

Billings, Montana Billings is the largest city in the U.S. state of Montana, with a population of 117,116 as of the 2020 census. Located in the south-central portion of the state, it is the seat of Yellowstone County and the principal city of the Billings Met ...

. It stretches the entire 72 mi (115 km) length of the Bighorn Canyon at full pool. The Lake was created by the 1965 construction of Yellowtail Dam on the

Bighorn River The Bighorn River is a tributary of the Yellowstone, approximately long, in the states of Wyoming and Montana in the western United States. The river was named in 1805 by fur trader François Larocque for the bighorn sheep he saw along its ba ...

, near

Fort Smith, Montana Fort Smith is a census-designated place (CDP) in Big Horn County, Montana, United States. The population was 161 at the 2010 census. The town is named for the former Fort C.F. Smith. The Crow name for this town is Annu'ucheepe, “Mouth of the ...

Fishing

Bighorn Lake has a surface area of 5574 acres, because of the dam, streamflow in the river is relatively stable with little daily fluctuation. Bighorn Lake supports a warmwater fishery.

Geography

Fishing

References

See also