Idaho Gold: Prospecting the Overlooked & Underrated for Backcountry Cutthroat
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By Brad Trumbo
As gray dust billowed in the wake of my Tundra, my mood immediately began to lift. I never look forward to the five-hour drive, but forty miles beyond pavement’s end is a quiet campsite alongside a river flowing rich with Idaho gold. Each year, (baring extreme wildfire danger) my fishing buddy Chas Kyger and I head into the Idaho backcountry to fish a Blue-Ribbon stream for west-slope cutthroat. Pulling into camp alongside his Tundra, I rolled out of mine with renewed eagerness to wet a fly. (Yes,
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we both have Tundras. Cute, eh?) Upon the requisite stretch and postdrive small-talk, I hastily popped up my tent, made a rudimentary bed, and set out to fish into darkness. The sun sets early in the deep canyons of the Idaho wilderness; the opulent evening glow casting an amber hue upon the considerable granite outcrops and emerald pools below. Rugged ridges and peaks reach skyward looming over the river, defying its brazen attempts to break
