By Chris Hunt As a kid, I remember seeing little jon boats cruising up and down the Sabine River along the border with Texas and Louisiana, their pilots running trot lines for channel cats and generally looking like they were having an excellent time. The boats, squared off in the front and pushed by a
By Sam Davidson I came across a video recently, on sockeye salmon migrating to the spawn in the Lake Iliamna area in Alaska. The productivity of this region for salmon is nothing short of amazing—and makes the proposed Pebble Mine, looming like the guillotine over the entire Bristol Bay ecosystem, that much more troubling. Watching
Fishing the Bear River. This reach would be inundated by the proposed Centennial Dam. By Chandra Ferrari With California just emerging from five years of punishing drought, there continues to be a lot of discussion about creating more water storage. While the fastest and most affordable way to capture and store more water is to
The fishing rig on the banks of Alaska’s Chena River. By Chris Hunt It was the first brand-new vehicle I ever bought. I showed up at the dealership, pointed to the model in the catalog and simply said, “Order it.” Since that time, it’s been from the Gulf of Mexico to the Arctic Ocean. It’s
by Kirk Deeter I love catching big fish. How can you not? After all, size is the benchmark that is ingrained to matter most to many anglers. My mother doesn’t fish much, but when I call her to say I spent the day fishing, she always asks: “Did you catch any?” Question two… “How big?”
The Kootenai River starts and ends in Canada. It runs 485 miles with about a third of those miles dipping into Idaho and Montana. The Kootenai Tribe lives along the river and once relied on its sturgeon for food. Chuck Cathcart/Idaho Public Television Native white sturgeon in the Kootenai River need some help and researchers
By Chris Hunt There’s a fine line between fishing from a drift boat and fishing from a source of chaos. The first time I rowed a drift boat, I damn near put it into the bridge abutment just above Ashton Dam on the Henry’s Fork while my two passengers—one of whom owned the boat—watched helplessly
Fly fisher Chad Brown is a unique guy—a former sailor who left the military in a state of depression and confusion, it’s likely that rivers and fly fishing saved his life. Today, Chad devotes much of his life working with veterans and inner-city youth, using fly fishing as a healing endeavor for people in need.
A front-line warning sign on Peleliu during World War II. By Chris Hunt My grandfather was an old man the last time we fished together on Robinson Creek, not far from where it leaves the boundary of Yellowstone National Park and flows into Idaho at the depths of a thigh-busting canyon. We’d walked in from
An angler walks along the Escalante River in southern Utah looking for native Colorado River cutthroat. Cliff Wirick photo. By Clint Wirick The red rock country of southern Utah is not often considered trout habitat for good reason. Many waters in the southern reaches of the second driest state of our country are too turbid
By Eric Booton Confidence overwhelmed me as I rode in the bow of the canoe. My cousin and I, paddling in tandem, raced toward the “pike of gold” at the end of the rainbow that Alaska’s midnight sun had put on display for us. The rainbow was particularly noteworthy, in fact. Powerful enough to captivate
By Brett Prettyman We were still stringing lines and slipping on wading boots when my preteen nephew came running into the parking area at Three Dollar Bridge on the Madison River. “Look how big this bug is,” he squealed while holding an enormous, and still squiggling, insect out for us to behold. It didn’t take
By Jenny Weis I imagine the following series of events has played out in households other than just mine: Partner loves fly fishing and goes all the time. Partner tells me *he thinks I, too, would love fly fishing. I believe him and am genuinely excited for him to teach me! Partner teaches me to
As a child we fished. My brothers and our friends did a lot of things together but primarily we fished. Each one of us allocated our allowance money to purchase what we needed for our next suburban adventure. A tackle box. A new reel and rod. A better selection of Rooster Tails. Not much else
Time for “an oldie, but a goodie.” Because it’s that time of year here in Idaho. The Middle Fork of the Salmon River has long been known as one of the best backcountry floats in the Lower 48, and for good reason. The dry-fly fishing for native cutthroats is unparalleled. The river is wild and
By Eric Booton I’m not a mechanic. In fact I’m pretty much the exact opposite. So when the check engine light on our beloved camper van named Ivy popped on and the performance of the engine took a turn for the worse, I wasn’t thrilled. As the vehicle that gets me to the river, launches
By Chris Hunt It’s a big weekend. The last one before Apoca-Eclipse hits eastern Idaho, and it’s the peak of the Perseids. The full solar eclipse set to darken daytime skies later this month is on everyone’s minds here in Idaho Falls. We’re in the sweet spot of its path of totality across America, and
By Kirk Deeter In the last issue of TROUT, Kris Millgate reported that Yellowstone National Park is considering a ban of felt-soled wading boots. And that prompted several letters to the editor, including some that criticized us for “advocating” for the ban, merely by writing about a proposal (just because you report on a topic
Here’s a little good news for your weekend. A few days ago, a year to the day that tens of thousands of coldwater fish were killed in the Yellowstone River due to low flows, high water temperatures, and associated disease, TU signed an agreement with Kinross—a mining company out of Toronto—that will result in at
By Sam Davidson Nowadays there is no age limit, apparently, for quarterbacks. Or for fly fishing. Last weekend, my eighty-year-old mother joined legends such as Lefty Kreh and Frank Moore in providing more proof of the latter, as she waded up and down the banks of t he South and Clark forks of the Stanislaus
