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Western Flyfishing

Posted on: Aug 01, 2023

When I arrived in Oklahoma for this year’s conference, I felt out of place.  To a small-town Idaho boy, the stories I heard were foreign and strange.  The wildest stories focused on the hillbilly art of noodling catfish.  This extreme version of fishing involves stuffing your hand into a hole in the bank of a cloudy river and hoping a large catfish takes a bite.  Then, you grab the fish by the lower jaw and hope you pull the fish out of its hole, and not vice versa. At surface level, noodling in the muddy rivers of Oklahoma bears no resemblance to what I grew up with.  In Idaho, we fly fish.  The rivers up here run clean and cold, and the fish are more likely to latch onto a dry fly than a human arm. Still, there are similarities.  That’s what I love about fishing.  No matter what, it all boils down to three goals: interact with nature, get away from the noise of life, and catch fish! Sure, it gets more complex than that, but I’m willing to bet a hillbilly noodler from Tulsa, Oklahoma and a dry-fly purist from Bozeman, Montana share the same basic goals in their pursuits. That’s why I want to share something that may be as foreign to you as noodling was to me. Noodling is certainly on my bucket list, but I wouldn’t trade my mountain home for anything. Mountains mean good hiking, mountain biking, and most importantly for this article, mountain lakes. Scattered across Idaho’s mountains are literally thousands of high mountain lakes. Many of these lakes are unnamed, but almost all of them have been stocked by Idaho Fish and Game at one time or another.  In these high elevation, low oxygen environments, trout rule the landscape. Species range from rainbow and cutthroat, all the way to the rare and exotic tiger (brook and brown hybrid) and golden trout. Fishing opportunities vary greatly from lake to lake.  Lakes less than 100 yards apart can offer drastically different conditions.  The quality of fishing is primarily determined by the quality of spawning habitat, or lack there of.  Lakes with flat, wide inlet or outlet streams often offer the best fishing due to the presence of good spawning habitat. Standalone lakes may be deep and alluring, but usually don’t hold many fish unless they have been stocked recently. The fish themselves also vary from lake to lake.  At some lakes, all it takes to tempt the smartest fish is a plain black ant pattern with 5x tippet.  At others, one must swap dozens of nymph patterns out before a fish even acknowledges your efforts. Each case can be exhausting.  There have indeed been times when fishing was too good for my own good. Regardless of the fishing quality, mountain lakes offer the most idyllic western scenery anyone could ask for.  If you are willing to hike a bit, it’s easy to get away from the crowds and enjoy stunning alpine views and gorgeous, wild fish. The Idaho backcountry is a fly anglers paradise. And to the noodlers who may be reading this, it can be your paradise too! All it takes to get started is
  • A backpack
  • A lightweight fly rod (4-5 weight is ideal)
  • Camping supplies
  • Boots
  • A box of dry flies
  • Plenty of mosquito spray
Idaho may be a long way from Oklahoma, but I encourage anyone who hasn’t experienced flyfishing in the west to make a trip out to my home state.  If backpacking into mountain lakes isn’t your thing, there’s still ample opportunity to flyfish blue ribbon trout streams and untouched rivers at lower elevations.  But as for me, I’ll be up in the mountains all summer, chasing delicate trout with a 9-foot stick and a wad of string. Because nothing… and I mean nothing, can beat these views.