My Trip to Idaho

W

Wmass

Member
Joined
Sep 17, 2006
Messages
397
I just returned from a ten day trip to Idaho for a family vacation/wedding and was lucky enough to get one great day of fishing in on the Lochsa River in northern Idaho. For those who do not know the Lochsa River, it is located in the northern Idaho panhandle region and has its source in the Bitterroot Mountains. The river has wild cutthroat and rainbow trout, plus some hatchery salmon and steelhead. It has great hatches of stoneflies and mayflies in the spring/early summer and continuous hatches of caddis and mayflies throughout the summer into the fall.

I honestly have never seen such a beautiful place in my life. The forest is thick and pristine and the river is absolutely gin-clear. The fish are some of the prettiest I have seen and the caddis and mayflies that I saw were amazing. I plan on getting back to the area around this time next summer for a week of fishing.

Below are my pictures from the trip. I will also include some picture from a trip I took way up into Hell's Canyon on the Snake River.
 
This is a view of the river from the road.
 
First fish that I got on a green crystal wooly bugger. This little guy was about 8"
 
10" cutthroat caught on a #18 yellow stimulator.
 
Caddis shucks and a stonefly shuck. The caddis shucks were covering the rocks everywhere you looked and they were about an 1/2 inch long each.
 
Cutthroat caught on a stimulator.
 
I will try to get all of my pics posted or provide a link to them all.

The biggest fish that I caught that day was a 14" cutthroat that came out of no-where in some really deep water and absolutely attacked my stimulator. #16-18 Stimulators and caddis were the go to flies for the day. My father-in-law caught a 14" and a 16" cutthroat and a friend caught an 18" cutthroat.

It is a great area and I highly recommend checking it out. It is about a 3 hours drive from Lewiston ID and there are plenty of places to camp out. You really have to check the water flows depending on the time of year because it can get really flooded and fast when snowpack starts to melt in the spring. Also, watch out for rattlers on the trails, apparently they are everywhere and they are aggressive.

PS- Air temps in these pics was around 100-105 degrees and water temps were in the low-mid 60's.
 
Beautiful pics..

With any luck, I'll be there (on the Lochsa) in early September.

I first saw it when we drove home to the Midwest from Bend when we got stuck there with no planes flying after 9-11. We crossed Idaho on Route 12 and my jaw was hanging open the entire time we were beside the river.

So, I'm lobbying hard for that to be this year's trip out west. Negotiations with Sr. Managment continue, but I'd say my chances are better than even...:)
 
Looks beautiful! Sign me up.
 
I lived on the Lochsa River about 7 years ago for a summer during college at the Powell Ranger Station. As you come into the Ranger station there is a small lodge and gas station with a sign that says "Next Gas Station 70 miles." It is located about 20 miles west of Lolo pass (about 65 miles West of Missoula, MT). It was by far the best time of my life. That river is a jewel if I have ever seen one in my life. It would be nothing to catch 20 - 30 of the most beautiful fish in an evening. As good as the fishing can be during the day, the minute the sun got off the water the fishing really picked up. Though not the largest trout you ever catch, definitely some of the most amazing. An 20" cutthroat is generally pushing the upward limit. The scenery there as well is absolutely gorgeous. There are also bull trout, although it is illegal to directly target catching these fish. (See: Double Bunny). If I could recommend flies, caddis and stonefly nymphs. I plan on going out next summer again for a week of fishing. If anyone is going out and is looking for some good places to fish, I will try and share what I remember. I highly recommend taking a day to drive through the area. There are gazillions of miles of forest roads through the national forests and glacier lakes. If you enjoy privacy, scenery, good fishing, etc. this is your place. Wmass, seeing those pictures brought back so many good memories. Thanks for sharing!! :-D :-D

Also, the river was a major route for Lewis and Clark on their expedition.
 
RED-HEADED-STRANGER Is it illegal to target the bull trout in the Locsa? My father-in-law's buddy who was acting as our guide said that they were trying to reduce the number of bulltrout because they were starting to effect populations of cutthroats because they are so damn aggressive. He said that any bull-trout caught were to be killed, no matter what the size.


Like RLEEP and RHS said, the Locsa is one of a kind and I highly recommend checking it out.
 
In 1993 the Idaho fish and game commission declared the bull trout may no longer be harvested.

Bull trout (a.k.a. Dolly Varden) are, like the brook trout and lake trout, really a char and not a trout. There is at this time no legal harvest of bull trout in the State of Idaho. Bull trout are in trouble throughout most of their range in the northern Rockies. Idaho anglers and fisheries managers are trying to recover this native fish before it goes on the Endangered Species list.

I think bull trout were both overfished due to their aggresive nature and the fact that they can really keep other species such as cutthroats in check, which many people dislike.

Ironically, they encourage the removal of brook trout in some places due to it being an introduced species. That would be like the state of Pennsylvania trying to remove wild brown trout populations. Sorry that is a can of worms I don't want to open up.
 
Well, since the Bull trout is listed as threatened under the federal Endangered Species Act in the entire lower 48, it sounds like maybe your guide needs to be reigned in. He could also be facing some serious fines or even federal jail time if someone wanted to make it happen. There is a five year review of their listing status because they haven't listed their habitat as "critical" which usually happens automatically, but since this "critical habitat" listing would put a damper on development and anything esle detrimental to the recovery of the fish...it id still under review.

Anyway...The Lochsa is one of my favorite places in Idaho...BTW, some of those steelhead are still wild. A few of the Salmon may be as well although they do dump in outgoing fingerlings each year.

I hope you didn't listen to your foolish "guide" 's advice and kill any bull trout. On another side note..when I lived in Idaho, the main Bull Trout biologist in the state was a Penn State grad...I went to college with his twin brother at Clarion.
 
I apologize for the bull trout confusion, perhaps what he was talking about were the brook trout that were introduced into that area a long time ago. He said something about brookies being introduced to the smaller streams, maybe he just mis-spoke about brookies being the species that were supposed to be killed.
 
RED-HEADED-STRANGER

Do you know what type of fish that is in the first picture?

I caught three or four that looked exactly like that fish. I was thinking that it was just a cutthroat that still had its young markings but I am not sure cause others that size didn't have those markings. I was also wondering if perhaps that river has golden trout? although I thin that is unlikely.
 
Wmass,

I never got to the bottom of what exactly those were as we would catch some of those every night, but they never were larger than 8 or 9". I think we just guess they were either young Chinook or Steelhead heading back to sea, but I doubt that as well. They may also be young rainbows or cutbows, however, where we fished we generally didn't catch anything with size except cutthroats.
 
They look like younger rainbows. They could be steelhead smolts. I have made that mistake before. Once on the Salmon river between Sun Valley and Stanley, I caught about 50 before I realized it was kind of easy and later confirmed that I was catching hatchery smolts that were recently released. Even if some of the steelhead in the Lochsa/Selway drainage aren't originally wild, they do still spawn and these could be wild smolts. Especially i you found them in large numbers in a small area. But they do look just like small wild rainbows.
 
it does look like younger rainbows.....but could it be a redband trout?
redband trout

i stand corrected. it is probably a younger bow. heres a link about the river and the first paragraph names all the species
link
 
I don’t know what species, but it looks like it could be native to the West Fork San Gabriel River, CA (page 26, March 2007 issue of Fly Fisherman).

My interest in this is because I caught a similar looking fish while ice fishing this past season – in Northeast PA. It’s a County park that gets stocked by the PFBC and at least one other sportsman’s club. I wouldn’t be surprised if someone put something like that in for the annual ice fishing derby.

Hank
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Latest posts

Montana Angler Fly Fishing
Montana Angler Fly Fishing
Harman's North Fork Cottages


Real Time Data From
the USGS Site

Share this page

Back
Top