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Tag Archives: Craft Beer

Southern Rockies Trip Wrap Up

May 12, 2026
Adventure, Beer, Coldwater, Exploring, Fish, Fishing, Fly Fishing, Food and Drink, Freshwater, Outdoors, Scouting, Travel, Wade Fishing
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We wrapped up our tour through the Southern Rockies on another beautiful stretch of water. No natives were targeted here, but I had heard word from a friend that we should fish here if we had the chance, and given how it looked on aerial photography, I couldn’t disagree with that statement. It looked fishy as hell.

I started off the day with a rough looking rainbow and Blake got himself a couple of browns early on. About an hour in I started to get dialed in, and caught a lot of browns when that happened. They were small to start the day, but seemed to pick up size as the day progressed.

At some point during our day we were the subject of many a passing tourist’s camera as a train rolled on by. I was able to catch another ugly rainbow and even a brook trout shortly after – that’s a slam back East, lol!

Blake motored through some tough fishing and ended the day with a solid brown. It’s rare when it happens, but I think I topped him in size and numbers that day. We made the long walk back to the car, cleaned up as best we could, and then made the drive back towards Colorado Springs – passing through a rogue hail storm along the way.

As is customary on all of these trips we found a couple breweries to try out before calling it a night. For those interested, I thought the Bristol set up in the old school with the other vendors was pretty interesting, as was their crowd – very eclectic – Urban Animal had the better beer though – either are worth the stop.

Northern Idaho – Day 5 – One Last Hurrah

October 12, 2023
Adventure, Beer, Camping, Coldwater, Exploring, Fish, Fishing, Fly Fishing, Food and Drink, Freshwater, Outdoors, Travel, Wade Fishing
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Packing up to leave is always bittersweet for me. On the one hand I’m usually ready to be home and see my family by the end of every trip. On the other hand getting back home means getting back to the daily grind and the stresses that go with it. Plus I hate the activity of packing up, I’d rather be fishing.

We did do a little more fishing before we headed out. I had to make one more try at a bull trout before putting the fly rod up to travel home. I chose a juicy looking roadside run to pick apart with a streamer and did manage to fool a cutthroat, but no bulls were raised.

Up above the juicy run was this cliff face that produced several fish for Marcus and I, much more productive than the run below. We headed out shortly after fishing those two spots. It was time to head back to civilization and talk to the families we had not spoken with since arriving at our campsite.

Milk shakes were secured at the nearest gas station and breweries were visited once we were back in Spokane – milk shakes and beer – staples for any western native trout trip! Stay tuned for a report from this year’s trip to Northern New Mexico and Southern Colorado!

A Trip to Northern Idaho

September 23, 2022
Adventure, Beer, Camping, Coldwater, Exploring, Fish, Fishing, Fly Fishing, Food and Drink, Freshwater, Hiking, Outdoors, Scouting, Travel, Wade Fishing
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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.

The Tetons
I love a window seat

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.