Semper on the Fly: August 2025

2025 is quickly turning into my cross country fly fishing tour. I've already caught brown trout in Minnesota and Wisconsin; caught brook trout, rainbow trout, landlocked salmon and largemouth bass in New Hampshire; and now cutthroat trout and more rainbows and brookies in Idaho. And the year isn't over yet!

First stop of the Idaho 2025 tour with my Coast Guard friend, retired Chief Warrant Officer Brad Hinken was the North Fork of the Big Lost River, a small meandering stream ideal for wet wading, light fly rods - my Orvis 761-4 Superfine was my weapon of choice, and dry flies - Elk Hair Caddis was the top fly but Light Cahills, a parachute white mayfly, and a Caddis with a red tail also worked. Fishing was slow from 9-11, but really picked up from 11-2 where Brad and I caught trout in bunches.- I had 20+ at this point. We then took a couple hour break and drove further upstream toward the more wooded areas to scope potential water. Working back to our spot we jumped in a section where the water wasn't as wide or deep, but I still got 1 or 2 in short order. We fished from 5:30 till 8 - I went downstream to the bridge and Brad stayed further upstream. Standing on the bridge I could see lots of trout upstream so I made a few really long casts to the head of the run half expecting/half not expecting to get a hookset from that position, but low and behold- fish on. I worked back to the water, landed that cuttie, caught a few more above the bridge and then several under the bridge in the shadows. I was using a double dry setup with an EHC and a #18 white mayfly as a trailer. I had good luck working my way back up to Brad with probably another 20+ trout. making it a 40 fish day for me and Brad had solid numbers too.

One of 40+ trout caught on dry flies during the day

Brad with a nice cutthroat trout

Most cutthroat trout were about 11-12 inches

Aggressive brook trout were throughout the stream

... all in all, Day 1 was a terrific start to the trip. We stayed in Mackay for lodging. Tried the Wagon Wheel Motel for a change of pace. The rooms were clean, but very small. Not sure I'll stay tere again, and may return back to the Bear Bottom Inn for future trips. We ate breakfast each morning at the Nine Peaks Restaurant - absolutely no better way to start each day. We had a dinner a couple of nights at the 7C BBQ Reataurant also on Main Street.

Day 2 we headed to Camas Creek, a tributary to the Middle Fork of the Salmon River. IT's a couple cours on dirt roads, but for a wilderness experience - there's nothin to beat it. We loaded up and hiked 2.2 miles downstream before jumping into the river. The first hole had several trout holdng deep - water clarity and bright sunshine made them easy to spot. We tried dries, nymphs and streamers but no takers early on... hopefully not an omen of things to come. Shortly after I had a beautiful long distance hookup with a big Cutthroat on a grasshopper. Pushing 18 inches I think it was the biggest trout I've caught in that river in the 10+ trips up there. We worked our way upstream, I had a little more luck today than Brad, but we each caught some really nice Cutthroats on grasshoppers. We also caught lots of 6 inch rainbows to keep the action fairly regular. In one big corner hole where Eric and I had an epic time years ago, we hooked three nice fish in there. Covering 8.8 miles of ground total, we wrapped up another really good day. Fewer fish, but bigger fish, and who doesn't like catching big trout on grasshoppers. I think I had upwards of 20 trout, counting the 6 inch rainbows. We also saw 4-6 migrating Pacific Salmon that had made ther way from the ocean, up the Columbia, to the Snake, to the Salmon, to the Middle Fork of the Salmon, and then to Camas Creek where they'll spawn, and ultimately die, but not before restarting the cycle of life for these magestic huge fish. On the drive out we saw handfuls of deer, and then a herd of at least 100 elk - yes a 100 elk - on the road, on the hlllseide to our left and in the gulley to our right. Wow!

River was in great condition for dry fly fishing

8-10 nice Cutthroats makes for an awesome day on the water

Beautiful Cutthroat Trout

All the trout were hard fighters - Brad with fish on

Not another person around for probably 50 miles - remote backcountry fly fishing

Fish on again for Brad

Another gorgeous Cutthroat

We had the river to ourselves

A huge herd (100+) stood and ran around us

A race up the hill to catch up with the Bull Elk

What a scenic area - "This is why we come to Idaho!"

On Day 3 we ventured to new waters - the East Fork of the Big Lost River located in Copper Basin. Uncrowded - which is a requirement for the fishing we want - we had the river pretty much to ourselves. The water was crystal clear - maybe ever too clear as the trout speeked really easily. Brad's persistence and patience paid off in one nice run as he landed several on dries after continually switching out different sizes and patterns before hitting on the right one. I missed several nice Cutthroat but found success in one run using a hopper / dropper (Copper John) combo and landed four trout. We fished the river from about 10-4. It's great looking water, and the conditions made the trout a bit more cautious - we'll have to work it more carefully next time.

The East Fork of the Big Lost definitely requires another run in the future

Cutthroats are beautiful trout

With daylight to spare, we headed over to the North Fork to fish the last three hours of daylight. We headed down to the bridge and the trout in and around the bridge (and there lots of them) were spooked under the still bright sunshine conditions. Undeterred we headed upstream and soon were picking off 1, 2, 3 trout per god looking hole - alternating turns fishing. This had the potential for an awesome night. ut about and hour and 20 trout into the evening, we heard voices upstream and then around the next corner we ran into a coupe fishing downstream. After passing them, the bite shut down completely. It happens.

Late afternoon on the North Fork

Brad with one of many Cutthroat landed

Every Cutthroat has a slighly different color shade and spot appearance

This one was much darker.

Compared to this lighter shaded Cutthroat

For our final day, we planned to make the drive over Doublesprings Pass Road by Mt Borah and hit one of the small creeks running out from the mountains feeding into the Pahsimoroi River. Ah but for the best laid plans... After crossing the summit and heading down into the valley, we blew the front right tire... in the absolute middle of nowhere - dirt road (with small jagged rocks), no cell coverage, and no one within miles. We changed the flat and put on the spare - just a temporary donut. Our backcountry adventure was shot, but I knew (or thought) we could head to Challis about 60 miles away and get the tire repaired as we had done that about 20 years ago. No tire shop service was available when we got there. A good samaritan said he plugged flats all the time and offered to help. His plug didn't seal 100% so we still had a major problem. A guy said the nearest tire service was in Arco about 80 miles away. In lieu of running with the slow leaking regular tire, we put the donut back on and made the trip down to Arco Point S station where the team there was incredibly helpful and responsive. We were repaired and back on the road shortly thereafter.

It was now about 4 pm and were were 30 miles south of Mackay. We read that Antelope Creek held trout so were headed up there, but after a short time in the water, we both felt the water temp was too high and, in fact, we saw a dead (nice size) rainbow trout floating dead in the water -- I'm guessing not enough oxygen in the lower reaches of the stream. Now it was 5 pm and we had time to fish one more spot. We headed to the Big Lost River in Mackay. The water was running at 350 cfs, fast but wadable. Heading downstream, we didn't have much lick though I landed one rainbow on a Copper John nymph rig and sawa few huge rainbo flash. As the water got faster, Brad said he was going no further and fished the holes where we were. I decided YOLO and headed across the fast current once again (did I mention I lost my wading staff a few days earlier) and once across, made my way around the bend and into a long fast and deep run that I had luck in previous years skirting a Crane Fly across a back eddy on the other side of the run. The next 90 minutes was magic! I hooked up to a huge rainbow and he immediately took ff downstream in the fast deep current. If I tried to stop him there, he'd break me off in a split second. My only option was to run downstream along the banking. I did, for about 100 yards. When I ran out of bank I jumped into check deep water and had no more room to go. So we battled here. I could see he was a huge rainbow. After several minutes, I got him in. Easily over 18 inches, I had no good way to take pics. After fumbling my cell phone around ( I dropped it in the water twice this week), I took a bad pic and when I tried to get my phone ready for a better pic, the rainbow escaped from my net. But I knew I got him... no fish story here. After regaining my composure I promptly hooked on to another nice rainbow. He took me downstream, not as far, and I successfully got him in (about a 14 incher). I was pretty stoked and after landing a third in the hole, headed back upstream to get Brad onto the Crane Fly hatch. Once together, i hooked on again to another great rainbow. And not long after we had a double. The only trouble was I placed my iPhone on the water's edge to record the battle, and as the fish took me downstream, I couldn't find my phone afterwards. After about 5-10 minutes I stumbled across it - whew. We fished back upstream catching a few more along the way and getting lots of eager missed takes as the skittering technique creates both exciting hooksets but also many missed takes from the trout. What a terrific way to end the trip - big rainbows, big water, dry flies!

To end the day we were going to have dinner at the Bear Bottom restaurant, but they totally failed to deliver in both hospitality and product, so we pivoted to the 7C BBQ where they had live music outside on the back patio. The next two hours was a complete slice of heaven. Cool air, high mountain peaks in the background, a roaring firepit, comfortable Adirondack chairs, a lively crowd of Mackay residents, a talented musician, and restaurant hosts who had cold frosty beers constantly at the ready. If Carole had been there, I think I could have convinced her to move to Idaho right then and there!