I love planning a fishing trip almost as much as I love going on one. I have trips planned that I may not get to for years. There are probably trips planned that I’ll never get to. It’s just the way I’m wired. If something I read, or see online, peaks my interest I start doing some general research and in short time have the makings of a trip. So when someone brings up an area or a species I usually have an idea of where that is and what I’ll be targeting. I was caught a little off guard when my friend Marcus mentioned going to a specific river system (I’ll refrain from naming it – you can do the research and figure it out) in Northern Idaho, that I wasn’t familiar with, to target Westslope cutthroat and potentially bull trout. Westslope are one of the subspecies of cutthroat that I had yet to catch and bull trout are an obvious draw, so I was immediately interested in the trip. After a little research on the location it was pretty obvious this was a place I needed to check out and I was all in. It took a little to get the wheels in motion on this one, but in time, I was able to get Blake, and then my dad, on board too, and a crew of four of us were headed to Northern Idaho from the deep South.

After securing our rental vehicles and purchasing supplies that we’d need to get us through a few days of remote camping and fishing we made the trek to the campground. It was a beautiful drive and one thing that stood out to me about Northern Idaho that was different than any other western trout trip I’ve done was how lush the forest was we were driving through. Sure it was a bit arid around Spokane, but the forest was very thick the closer we got to our destination. Thick stands of evergreen forest with a diverse base of undergrowth where the light did reach the ground. It was a healthy ecosystem and one that obviously didn’t suffer from a lack of rainfall.

We got pretty lucky when we arrived at the campground that we wanted to stay at, as someone had just left what was, arguably, the best site there, and it was ours for the taking. Right next to the river and with enough space to fit all of our set ups, it was perfect. After setting up tents and hammocks, the call of the river was too strong to resist, and we were able to wet our lines before it got too dark.