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, September 4
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.
The PhD water: Idaho's legendary spring creek, where Hemingway's ghosts watch 20-inch rainbows refuse your best drift.
Idaho's trophy shallows: a caldera-rim lake of hybrids and brookies measured in pounds, minutes from Yellowstone's back door.
Idaho's canyon secret: a tailwater of wild rainbows in desert basalt, where flows write the calendar and solitude survives.
Idaho's carp-and-cutthroat paradox: a high-desert reservoir of trophy Bear Lake cutts, bowfishing armadas and pelican politics.
Idaho's canyon B-run: the South Fork Clearwater squeezes giant steelhead into pocket water where every hookup becomes a rodeo.
The wilderness fork: cutthroat water above Dworshak where the road ends and Idaho's backcountry trout fishing begins.
Fifty-four miles of flooded canyon: Dworshak grows Idaho’s biggest smallmouth and hides kokanee under 600 feet of quiet.
The shadowed Joe: a wild cutthroat river running tea-clear through cedar country, catch-and-release and proud of it.
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.
Idaho’s big Snake River water: American Falls grows trophy trout and walleye across 56,000 acres of high desert.
Perch capital: Cascade Reservoir stacks jumbo yellow perch, coho and trout under the West Central Mountains.
Idaho’s trophy trout reservoir: Magic grows rainbows and browns in Big Wood River water on the high desert.
Idaho’s kokanee and trout lake: Anderson Ranch holds deep, cold water in the South Fork Boise canyon.
Boise’s backyard lake: Lucky Peak holds kokanee, trout and smallmouth fifteen minutes from downtown.
Hells Canyon water: Brownlee stacks crappie, smallmouth and catfish in 57 miles of Snake River canyon.
The River of No Return: Idaho’s Salmon runs 425 miles of steelhead, chinook and wild canyon.
Wild and scenic whitewater: the Lochsa runs westslope cutthroat through the Bitterroot wilderness.
Idaho’s protected river: the Selway runs cutthroat through a wilderness few anglers ever reach.
Idaho’s whitewater river: the Payette runs trout and rafts through the mountains north of Boise.
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).
| Water | Type | County | Live gauge | Peak month |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Clearwater River | River | Nez Perce | USGS | Apr |
| Henrys Fork | River | Madison | USGS | Apr |
| Lake Pend Oreille | Lake | Bonner | modeled | Apr |
| Snake River (South Fork) | River | Bonneville | USGS | Apr |
| Boise River | River | Ada | USGS | Apr |
| Silver Creek | River | Blaine | USGS | Apr |
| Henrys Lake | Lake | Fremont | modeled | Apr |
| South Fork Boise River | River | Elmore | USGS | Apr |
| Blackfoot Reservoir | Reservoir | Caribou | modeled | Apr |
| South Fork Clearwater River | River | Idaho | USGS | Jan |
| North Fork Clearwater River | River | Clearwater | USGS | Apr |
| Dworshak Reservoir | Reservoir | Clearwater | USGS | Mar |
| Saint Joe River | River | Shoshone | USGS | Apr |
| Lake Lowell | Reservoir | Canyon | modeled | Mar |
| Coeur d Alene Lake | Lake | Kootenai | USGS | Apr |
| Priest Lake | Lake | Bonner | USGS | Apr |
| American Falls Reservoir | Reservoir | Power | USGS | May |
| Cascade Reservoir | Reservoir | Valley | USGS | Apr |
| Magic Reservoir | Reservoir | Blaine | USGS | Apr |
| Anderson Ranch Reservoir | Reservoir | Elmore | USGS | May |
| Lucky Peak Reservoir | Reservoir | Ada | USGS | May |
| Brownlee Reservoir | Reservoir | Washington | USGS | Mar |
| Salmon River | River | Idaho | USGS | Jan |
| Lochsa River | River | Idaho | USGS | Apr |
| Selway River | River | Idaho | USGS | Apr |
| Payette River | River | Boise | modeled | Apr |
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.