The Clearwater carries the largest-bodied steelhead run on Earth: B-run fish that feed two years in the Pacific and come home at 12-20 pounds, 500 river miles from the sea. Fall swings, winter giants, and a sleeper smallmouth summer.
Reports current for Friday, October 23
Every one of the 26 Idaho waters we cover has a live read this morning. None reaches 4 out of 5 and 1 is slow. Water runs 47 F to 74 F. Pressure is holding steady on most of them, so the day comes down to water temperature and wind. 22 have a better-than-even chance of rain.
Best right now: American Falls Reservoir 3/5, Anderson Ranch Reservoir 3/5, Blackfoot Reservoir 3/5
Live verdicts from this morning's reports.
Idaho's big-fish highway: home of the B-run steelhead, twenty-pound ocean fish a state away from the sea.
The world's most studied trout stream: spring-creek flats, giant rainbows and hatches that set the standard.
Idaho's inland sea: 1,150 feet deep, home of monster rainbows and resurgent kokanee.
The South Fork: Idaho's big cottonwood tailwater, thick with native cutthroat and heavy browns under the Tetons' far side.
Idaho's urban ribbon: wild trout and whitefish through downtown Boise, steelhead trucked in each fall, and a greenbelt that makes it all walkable.
Silver Creek: the spring creek near Picabo that IDFG calls a world-class trout fishery, with The Nature Conservancy's preserve on its upper reach.
Henrys Lake: a Fremont County, Idaho lake drained by the Henrys Lake Outlet to the Henrys Fork, with its own trout season, a two-trout limit and posted closed areas.
The South Fork Boise below Anderson Ranch Dam: a Reclamation tailwater northeast of Mountain Home whose flows follow releases from a 474,900-acre-foot reservoir.
Blackfoot Reservoir in southeast Idaho: a reservoir of nearly 17,000 acres that Idaho Fish and Game stocks with triploid rainbow trout and lists for cutthroat trout, rainbows and smallmouth bass.
A Clearwater River tributary in Idaho County, part of the basin where Clearwater 'B' strain steelhead return from the Pacific, with seasons set by IDFG each year.
The North Fork Clearwater above Dworshak Reservoir, a trout river in Clearwater County cut off from steelhead since Dworshak Dam was built.
Fifty-four miles of reservoir behind a 717-foot dam: Dworshak holds Idaho’s record smallmouth, kokanee and stocked rainbow trout.
St. Joe River: a westslope cutthroat river in the Idaho Panhandle where no cutthroat may be kept.
The Treasure Valley’s off-channel giant: Lowell’s weedy flats grow double-digit largemouth minutes from Boise’s sprawl.
North Idaho’s big water: Coeur d’Alene holds chinook, kokanee and a northern pike population that changed the lake.
Idaho’s crown jewel: Priest Lake holds mackinaw in cold, clear water under the Selkirks, with a wild upper lake beyond.
American Falls Reservoir: a Reclamation reservoir on the Snake River where Idaho Fish and Game stocks rainbow trout, now recovering from a deep drawdown.
Lake Cascade on the North Fork Payette: big yellow perch, stocked rainbow trout and coho, and one of Idaho's most popular ice fisheries.
A 3,580-acre irrigation reservoir on the Big Wood River with a gently sloping shoreline, stocked heavily by IDFG with rainbow trout.
Anderson Ranch Reservoir: a 4,607-acre Reclamation lake on the South Fork Boise that IDFG manages mainly for kokanee.
Lucky Peak: a Corps flood-control lake 15 minutes from Boise, stocked with kokanee and rainbow trout and drawn down every late summer.
Snake River crappie water: Brownlee Reservoir stretches more than fifty miles along the Idaho–Oregon line.
The Salmon River at White Bird: the lower canyon of a 425-mile free-flowing river whose whole drainage lies in Idaho.
Wild and scenic whitewater: the Lochsa runs westslope cutthroat through the Bitterroot wilderness.
A 100-mile Idaho wilderness river with cutthroat, rainbow and bull trout, where float permits come by lottery.
Idaho's Payette: a 75-mile main stem with trout, bass and catfish, and a South Fork stocked with rainbows all summer.
Species activity across the state's covered waters. Peak of the year: May.
1 = slow, 5 = peak. Current month highlighted.
Seasonal surface curve for this state's dominant water type (estimated).
Idaho may be the most underrated fishing state in America: the Henrys Fork alone would make a state's reputation, and it is one river among dozens. B-run steelhead swim 500 miles inland up the Clearwater; the Salmon's cutthroat eat dries all summer; Silver Creek offers spring-creek perfection; and the panhandle's lakes (Pend Oreille's giant rainbows, Coeur d'Alene's pike) fish like a different country. Licenses are cheap and crowds thin out a mile from any road.
March-April: pre-runoff nymphing and the last of the steelhead springs. June: the Ranch opens, salmonflies march up the big rivers. Summer: terrestrials, cutthroat streams and warm-water surprises (smallmouth on the Snake). October-November: the steelhead main event on the Clearwater, plus brown trout on the move. Winter: quiet tailwaters and the patient art of swinging for cold steelhead.
A fish that spends two full years in the ocean instead of one, returning twice the size: the Clearwater and Salmon rivers carry nearly the entire world population of them.