Page 183 - North 40 Outfitters

As the water finally lowers to fishable levels here in North Idaho, I decided to take my family fishing on the upper Coeur d'Alene River. This fishery switched to a Camp R fishery just a few years ago and now the fishing is stellar. Native Westslope Cutthroat reach lengths up to 24'. It is by far my favorite fishery offered near the Ponderay/Sandpoint area. My sister-in-law (Leslie Spohn) became hopelessly addicted to fly fishing during her 5 day stay on the upper river. She landed several fish on dries and plans on continuing to chasing fish on fly with her husband Zach. My son, Landon, who is three years old, caught his first fish on fly as well. Before he was born my father bought him a 6' 2wt rod matched with a reel and line. At first I tried to get Landon to cast without a fly on the end....but he kept asking for his 'lure' so then ...

My dad and I had to make a family trip to South Dakota recently to our family's farmstead near Sisseton, SD. A long drive, lots of window time, and plenty of great conversation later, we found ourselves back across the flat lands of the Dakotas where we could finally see mountains again. In case you haven't driven across eastern Montana and the Dakotas before, it's flat... not kind of flat, like between "Great Falls and Havre flat"... it's so flat that there is no analogy to describe it's flatness flat (A person from Montana their whole life would be impressed by how even the ground is, it's a basketball court or soccer field making paradise). No offense if you lived or live there, I was born there, lived in both North and South Dakota, and proud of it. I will also say that the Dakotas are responsible for a major portion of our countryâ€...

This is a documentary filmed about our local Patagonia representative for Montana Mark Harbaugh. The documentary was filmed by independent journalist Rich Addicks who has done work for CNN. Mark has been a great rep for us since we brought Patagonia in last year, and since we are a farm store... we really appreciate the fact that he is also a rancher in southwest Montana.

Anyone who swings a fly for steelhead knows of the fabled rivers on the Olympic Peninsula, the Hoh, Sol Duc, Calawah, and Bogachiel. With incredible runs of wild winter steelhead, these rivers are what we dream about. I was finally able to make it over for a short week to swing some flies, mostly on the Hoh and for a day on the Sol Duc. To say that it is a long drive is an understatement. Eleven hours to Seattle, an hour ferry ride, and 3.5 hours to the coast can drive someone crazy (and to make matters worse, I was lacking some quality tunes to keep me occupied).  I met a couple others in Seattle, Zach and Ian, and we didn’t get to Forks until around 11 p.m. By 7 a.m. we were on the Hoh with the boats ready. The river looked perfect and there wasn’t a cloud in the sky, which was a pleasant surprise considering that area only average...

We have officially set dates for our trip November 6th-10th of 2011 we will be heading to Guanaja, Honduras in search of Bonefish, Permit, and relaxation. We want to fill the lodge if possible and the lodge can hold a maximum of 22 spots. Here is a detailed description of the trip from the view point of Jim Klug from Yellowdog Fly Fishing which is who the trip is being booked with. Trip cost is $927 plus international airfare. Here for more info. 'Old-school Merle Haggard blared from the bar as we waded off the flat and onto the boardwalk in front of Graham's Place Island Resort. We had been a week on the island of Guanaja and had become well accustomed to the fact that there were basically two kinds of music played throughout Honduras' Bay Islands: country and western. It's a strange thing that country music is king in this part of the C...

Yep... that's our conclusion. Fly fishing dudes must be that cool. I think it's the ladies way of trying to attract our niche breed. I can see how our style of headlamp wearing, unfashionable, bearded, insect loving type has tempted a large population of highly fashionable females to dress up their hairdo with our fine Whiting Hackles. It's so obvious... they want us. Last week a lady came in and bought all of our Euro hackles from Whiting. I mean these things aren't cheap. These are like $40 hackles and the Trout Shop in Craig sold all of theirs that same day' both shops sold all their hackles to ladies. I have yet to see a lady wearing one of these hackle extensions, other than in pictures of course because after I heard why we are selling so many hackles I immediately had to find out what they looked like. Even Anglers Trade, which is...

We have set official dates for our trip to Guanaja, Honduras this fall which are November 6th-10th. This is obviously not your typical or traditional bonefish and/or permit destination. Guanaja Island is one of three islands that make up the bay islands 30 miles off the coast off the Honduran mainland. Honduras is located in Central America, south of Belize, north of Nicaragua and El Salvador, and East of Guatemala. The capital city is Tegucigalpa. We will be flying in to the island of Roatan and then catching a plane to Guanaja. I, myself, am already planning on staying at least one or two days in Roatan to check out the more populated island. The main language here is Spanish, so buff up from high school, however contrary to the extreme Latinoamericana culture of the Honduran mainland, the Bay Island or Las Islas de la Bahia are much mo...

When you think about Thailand, your first thought probably isn't taking giant fish on mountain stream on dries. However, our good friends at Montana Fly Company, owned by Adam Trina, are changing all that. One of our North 40 Fly Shop staff, Kris Keller, will be heading to Thailand to finalize all of our custom fly patterns for the fly shop, working with the MFC to create some new fly patterns, working with their fly tying staff overseas, and hopefully getting to test the waters abroad. Kris has come a long ways since moving to Great Falls a few years ago from Frontier Anglers in Dillon. He now hosts frequent fly tying classes at the shop, and is getting a reputation for one of our most creative fly tiers in the industry, so we are excited to see what he comes back with. According to MFC's Adam Trina, the fly fishing in Thailand can be pr...

Here is a quick video and some of the scenery on the Mo this weekend from our perspective. It was super windy in the canyon section, and to our surprise was actually less windy up by Wolf Creek bridge (never happens).  It was 46 degrees up there however, and felt like spring might be starting to poke through. I'm sure Mother Nature will make sure she gets a few more blasts in from the north but it was a nice weekend, can't wait for the next one. We got fish both swinging streamers and nymphing. I think if the water and air temp warm up just slightly the streamer fishing will really start to heat up. Lots of scuds in the water right now. We only saw a couple rising fish but nothing to cast to.

  The West Slope Cutthroat Cutthroats are considered native to Northern Idaho, British Columbia's upper Columbia system, across the continental divide into Montana and Alberta. Kingdom:Animalia Phylum: Chordata Class:Actinopterygii Order:Salmoniformes Family:Salmonidae Genus:Oncorhynchus Species: O. clarki Cutthroat's scientific name, Oncorhynchus clarki lewisi, came from the explorers that we are all very familiar with. Sometime between 1804 and 1806, Meriwether Lewis and William Clark led the Lewis and Clark Expedition in search of finding the Pacific. This expedition documented discovering the Cutthroat subspecies at the''Great Falls of the Missouri River." Cutthroats vary in size but on average they range in the 8-12 inch range with occasionally getting up and around 18 inches. They are a smaller species of trout that have small ...

I made of list of issues we had this year, and we plan to remedy to make it to the water faster in 2011. I will remember my anchor, and not have to tie rocks to my drift boat. We are going to carry boat plugs at the store this year. The amount of breakfast burritos and Hot Stuff pizza I have eaten at the Ulm gas station has to be unhealthy, and I will make sandwiches in the morning this year. I plan on drinking more water in the boat, and less of the other... we'll see. I plan to witness the morning hatches this year, not sure what the Missouri is like before noon but I'm getting older, and seems like Ihave been getting out of bed easier, so I'm looking forward to that. I am not chasing stonefly hatches this year, if it happens it happens. Unless Ihear about one, and in that case...well I'm chasing it. I'm going to land a Permit. If we ...

The Brown Trout-. Brown trout are considered to be native to Europe and Asia, although there are large populations of landlocked Brown’s in Greece and Estonia. Kingdom: Animalia Phylum: Chordata Class: Actinopterygii Order: Salmoniformes Family: Salmonidae Genus: Salmo Species: Salmo Trutta The Brown is a mid-size fish averaging 2lbs or less. Browns are very similar to Atlantic salmon in which a typical female produces 900 eggs per pound of body weight. They can live to the ages of 20 years old but in today’s world they have a higher risk of death due to warming water temperatures, invasive species and most recently found that Brown’s (typically males) die after spawning. Brown’s typically grow to larger sizes then the average 2lbs due to an abundance of forage fish in the waters they live in today. Browns are a very active feedi...