The Land of 1000 Pictures...

[iliketofish]

I don't post much on here anymore, mostly because I currently live in Washington and I don't often have Idaho fishing reports anymore. However, I do now so here you go []:

For my job I have to catch and tag steelhead. It's rough, but somebody's gotta do it... Anyway, without getting into details I pretty much lived in a hotel in Clarkston for April and May and in a cabin on the Lochsa for most of June. We usually worked pretty long days but in the evenings I found myself bored in my hotel room so of course I fished!
My co-worker and I decided to have a contest to see who could catch the most species while we were there. I won with 20 but she put up a respectable 18. A few of these were technically caught in Washington and Montana, but by and large, these were Idaho fish, and good examples of why I like Idaho the best! I won't show you all of them, just some of my favorites. Here you go:

Here's a couple token steelhead pics just for proof []:
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In order to boost our species count, we got pretty creative. Our lists included things like redside shiners, speckled dace, chiselmouths, sculpins, and northern pikeminnow including this behemoth:
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But we couldn't just fish for tiny fish though, we also caught some dinos!
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I didn't get any big ones, but I did catch my smallest one ever, which I think is cool too!
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The illusive Mann Lake catfish!
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This jumbo from the Snake was not what I was expecting to pull up when I got a bite on a big chunk of chicken liver!
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This little guy gets to be my species #88 on my life list - the mighty yellow bullhead (I always like a fish that s for the picture)!
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I bought a spey rod last year and never really had a chance to learn how to cast it so I brought it up to the Lochsa to get some practice in. I threw big streamers with it hoping for some bigger cutts which I caught, but I also caught a few of these beauties too:
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Here's an example of a decent Lochsa westslope:
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I wasn't really expecting this little guy though:
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On a particularly slow day, we took the afternoon off and dropped over the hill into Montana and fished the Bitterroot. That was my first time there - definitely won't be my last!
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And I know there is no fish in this last one, but it was too fun not to include. We took another afternoon off just before we packed up and headed back to Washington and went whitewater rafting on the Lochsa with the folks at 3 Rivers. I was worried that it wouldn't be that good since it was only flowing at about 4,500 CFS. Turns out that was a silly thing to worry about - it was awesome! Did I mention that I like Idaho??
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Anyway I don't know if this counts as a "fishing report" or not, I just kind of wanted to share some pictures.


And if you're discouraged after one of those rare slow fishing days in Idaho, just remember that it could be worse - you could live in Washington [:p][laugh][]
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