Page 92 - North 40 Outfitters

My collection of fly-fishing photos dates back to the 1980s and mixed in among them are hundreds of images of my two Labrador retrievers, Moose and Shadow. Check out what we offer online at North40.com for the four-legged members in your family. Those dogs are long gone now, but I still enjoy looking at photos of them and remembering all the interesting times we had together. When I had those dogs I was on the water for a 150 or more days a year and they were with me at all times. When I wrote books about fly fishing, I told stories about those dogs and included photos of them in the mix. By the late-1990s, when the dogs were in their primes and the books were circulating well, people started recognizing Moose and Shadow on the water, which was always a nice way to start a conversation and make new friends. Read my IFTD 2017 write up her...

Sunday morning found me on the road, headed to meet up with Luke Mckee. As I crossed the Okanogan River I could see an armada of boats on the Columbia River, plying the water for chinook salmon. The Brewster Salmon Derby was coming to an end, but that was not going be our target for the day. Here's a bass pattern you might wanna tie up. Instead, our sights were set on the smallmouth bass that live in the Okanogan. Ten minutes later I was pulling into Luke's place. He was just finishing changing the irrigation water and was still sporting rubber knee-high boots and shorts. I loaded my rods and gear bags into his boat as he made himself look more like a real fly angler, whatever that might look like. Once the boat was loaded we were off, and 20 minutes later the boat was in the water. Need a new fly rod? AKA: Have you seen the Winston Air?...

It didn't take long for me to hit the the Clark Fork after I saw flows at 6,000 cfs, and holding strong. Conditions were great! Not a cloud in the sky and an occasional breeze to keep me cool. Water clarity was excellent. There wasn't much of a hatch going on. The caddis clung to the streamside trees. Occasionally a cutthroat exploded on the surface, but not frequently enough to predict when the next rise might occur. Surprisingly,I didn't see the occasional white mayfly I usually find on the water this time of year. Check out our gear selection online here. Fishing was fairly tough. We spent close to four hours on the water, and only had a handful of trout to show for it. I did swung up a beautiful 15" cutthroat on a #6 olive Woolly Bugger . . . on my second cast of the day. A few casts later, I missed what felt like a small fish, or a ...

I’ve received some puzzling reports about the fishing on north-central Washington’s Methow River for the last couple of weeks, so I thought I would look into it for myself. The reports indicated a serious scarcity of the bigger westslope cutthroat trout that my home river had become known for. I was able to get on the water at around 7 a.m. The first run was close to my home and has always served as a go-to spot that never fails to yield one or two 18"-24" cutties. I rigged up my ECHO ION XL 6-weight with a 210 grain AIRFLO Scout head. Grabbed one of my go to streamers, a #8 Sculpzilla, and started swinging the run from the top down. Picked up a couple small size rainbows in the 8"-10" range. Only found one small cutty that was about 8". Puzzled I went back to the top of the run, changed streamers to a Skittish Smolt, and repeated th...

We are well into August and conditions have evolved into a new norm.  The water is running at the relatively steady seasonal low flow of just over 4Kcfs.  The water temps have generally remained in the mid 60’s.  Cooler weather this past weekend and for the coming week should keep it where it needs to be.  So far, we have survived the heat and while there is a stream of floating weeds, we are looking pretty darn good for late summer.  We have experienced great dry fly fishing this year.  Many Missouri River fish are conditioned to feeding on top daily. What’s hatching? Trico’s are the primary hatch at the current time.  The volume of bugs can be variable day to day, but some fish are definitely locked onto them.  Daily pods build up in regular places.  Fish in these pods can be very selective when feeding on the Trico’s....

Summer is a good time to be in the mountains and the appeal grows when you add native westslope cutthroat trout and huckleberries to the mix. Want a little history lesson on westslope cutthroat trout in Idaho? Read this. That’s what I did about 10 days ago when a friend and I headed into Idaho’s backcountry to fish those cutthroats and to, hopefully, locate some bull trout. We found the cutthroats but didn’t see any bulls. But we found an adequate consolation prize: hundreds of huckleberry bushes loaded with ripe fruit. Between my friend and me we may have landed 40 nice cutthroats on dry flies. The fish are eager this time of year with modest flows in the rivers and lots of bug activity (aquatic and terrestrial) on top. Throw a Parachute Adams, a black Humpy, a small Stimulator, an X-Caddis, or a Purple Haze, and it's game-on. Loo...

These boots sprang from a failure. Jim Winjum says this about the origin story of Kenetrek hunting boots: “We first started designing and building boots after an eight day hunt in the Mackenzie Mountains of the Northwest Territories in 2002. The merciless country tested us in unimaginable ways, and I was winning the fight, until my feet made me want to lay down and die. After chasing a Dall Ram 10 miles straight up, we caught and killed it, and started back down. That's when my muscles screamed and my pack straps felt like they cut clear through me... but that didn't stop me. My boots did. What were once blisters became almost freakish gashes that took me down for the count. That's when I knew we had to design and build a better boot that could keep up with me, a high-country mountain sheep hunter.” These boots are used by hunters an...

Lowa is the only footwear manufacturer in the world to be granted ISO 9001 status for the highest quality construction and process standards. What is ISO 9001? ISO 9001 is the international standard that specifies requirements for a quality management system (QMS). Organizations use the standard to demonstrate the ability to consistently provide products and services that meet customer and regulatory requirements. That means when you buy a pair of Lowa boots, there is a history of happy customers standing behind their purchase to help give you peace of mind. Our Lowa's are online here and they qualify for free shipping. These boots are built to exacting standards that have earned the company a name known throughout the boot world. Below are reviews from employees who use Lowa hunting boots in their hunts. What boots did you first start...

“I’m a signalman for BNSF railway.” That’s how the interview with Sam McAnally opened. For me, that profession is a white space—so, I had to ask what that job entailed. “See this?” Sam says, as he points at the light switch in Drew’s office, “It has wires and electricity inside it that allow me,” he flips off the switch, flips the switch back on, “To open and close the circuits that allow energy to pass through and control the light in that outlet. A signalman does the same thing, except we work on the connections between tracks. So, when a train switches tracks, when the arms come down and the signals blink, there has to be a circuit that opens or closes to make that all happen. A signalman works on those connections, for railway boom trucks, cars… all the equipment you see on a track—we work on the electricity...

If its bass you seek, get out your headlamps and bug spray. That’s what I did recently when I headed up to Palmer Lake in northern Okanogan County to see how the summertime warmwater fisheries were fairing. I got on the water around 6 p.m. covering my usual spots, marking fish on the fishfinder, but catching very little. Around 8 p.m. the mountain shadows spread over the lake and, like a switch turning on, the bite happened. I picked up numerous perch 8-10" in 10 to 15-feet  of water trolling small Storm Smash Shads in perch patterns. Check out the baits and lures we have online here.   When I tried trolling deeper all I found were large northern pikeminnow, which are staging in spectacular numbers on the north end of the lake. Switching to bass around 9 p.m. I landed several smallmouth in the 14- to 16-inch range, and one fat 4...

It’s relatively quiet on the river these days.  The summer peak of guides and anglers from all over the country has moved on.  The days with mixed hatches of bugs available all day long has also changed. Trico’s still dominate the morning and will remain your best bet for finding the most rising fish.  Caddis are still about, but are a shadow of what they were in late June. The dry fly game after the early morning is shifting to terrestrials (ants, hoppers, beetles) and attractors. Want to see our selection of terrestrial patterns? In the Summer we see a Slower Mo The pace of the river has slowed somewhat.  The current now winds its way through weed beds, giving it that slow, undulating, spring creek look.  The water is also at its summer temperature peak.  The activity level of the fish follows the daily temperature swing (inv...

Flows were between 17,000-30,000 cfs in the 3 hours I fished, and the water clarity was decent. The North side of the river looked inexplicably clearer, however I was fishing the South side. There was a strong 10-15 mph West wind rushing upriver, making it almost impossible to throw dries... not that there were many rising trout to cast to. I saw a handful of small cutthroat sporadically eat a few dries off the surface, but the rises were too inconsistent to have a chance at hooking one. As far as bugs, there were a few #12 white mayflies and #20 caddis that got caught in the gusts of wind, and buzzed by my head. Have you seen these dry fly patterns? The caddis were able to hang on to the downwind side of my shirt, while the mayflies are probably somewhere in Missoula. Swing the Deeper Waters The swing saved the day! I initially th...