Idaho's world-class smallmouth water. PC: Visit Idaho

Dworshak Dreams

bass, Drake Magazine Summer 2025, Homepage Content, U.S. placesLeave a comment

A float tube is the wrong vessel for Dworshak Reservoir. The lake is more than fifty miles long, nearly twenty thousand acres, in some of the wildest country in Idaho. A friend who hunts elk in the surrounding forest, usually from a boat-in only campsite, refers to the lake as “Big D.”
I knew all of this before I showed up there in early May to search for smallmouth. Yet there I was, shouldering a float tube to a beach a few hundred yards from the launch, trying to avoid hearing the jet-boat crowd laughing when I strapped fins on.

Worth Protecting. Photo By: Steve Bly

Monumental Decision

Conservation, Daily Drake, Drake Magazine Back Issue Content 2024, Homepage Content, Policy/Politics/Laws, U.S. placesLeave a comment

FANS OF THE early-2000s political drama “The West Wing” may recall an episode in the show’s first season where Josh (Bradley Whitford, as Deputy Chief of Staff) tells President Bartlet (Martin Sheen) how he can use the Antiquities Act of 1906 to prevent a mine from being built in Montana: “You’re gonna establish Big Sky National Park!”

Jimmy's All Seasons Angler street sign. Photo by Beau Davis

Jimmy’s All Seasons Angler

Daily Drake, Fly Fishing Industry, Flyshop Friday, Homepage Content, Lodges, Outfitters, and GuidesLeave a comment

Once known as little more than a railroad hub, prime agricultural center, and adjacent to the first economically viable nuclear reactor in the United States, the community of Idaho Falls has since become known as centrally located to some of the best trout fisheries in the country. These include the main Snake River, the Bear River, American Falls, the South Fork of the Snake, the Henry’s Fork, Yellowstone National Park, and more water in-between than you can literally and metaphorically shake a stick at. And, if you’re looking for one of the best all-purpose and all-species fly shops to service you in this flyfishing mecca, look no further than Jimmy’s All Seasons Angler in Idaho Falls.

Views and variety along the Snake

Idaho’s South Fork

Destination travel, Drake Magazine Back Issue Content 2014 Summer, Trout, U.S. placesLeave a comment

DURING THE WANING DAYS OF SUMMER 2000, guide Dave Deardorff rowed his drift boat one stroke too far. Idaho’s lower South Fork of the Snake had fished well that afternoon. Cutthroat sipped BWOs under tormented skies, while Deardorff storm-jumped his way downstream. Finally, something angry surrounded him and his two clients. He sunk oar blades…

An argument for catch-and-release fishing

Accident in Bear Gulch

Drake Magazine Back Issue Content 2012, Drake Magazine Back Issue Content Winter 2012, Humor, Lifestyle, Opinion, Trout13 Comments

I rarely keep trout—let’s get that straight right away. I have no ethical objection to killing them when done responsibly, I just prefer to leave them in the river. Plus I’ve never really enjoyed the taste of trout, which my wife still regards as “strange,” given the amount of time and effort I spend chasing…

Deconstructing Dworshak

Conservation, Drake Magazine Back Issue Content 2012, Drake Magazine Back Issue Content Fall 2012, Salmon/Steelhead, U.S. places2 Comments

Waters of Idaho’s North Fork Clearwater River once flowed freely to the Pacific. Cayuse Creek dropped from a high-elevation meadow into Kelly Creek, which funneled into the North Fork, which melded into the Clearwater proper, then the Snake, and finally the mighty Columbia. Native steelhead muscled upstream through it all—massive populations of massive fish during…

Drake Magazine Roadless Areas

Keeping Roadless and WSA Areas Wild—and Accessible

Drake Magazine Back Issue Content 2011, Drake Magazine Back Issue Content Fall 2011, Opinion, Policy/Politics/Laws, U.S. placesLeave a comment

There was a Western Governor’s Association annual meeting held on June 29, 2011, in Coeur d’ Alene, Idaho. And among the various sessions was one called “Restoring and Managing the Health of Forests in the West.” A worthwhile topic, right? I mean, who’s not for healthy forests? So I checked in via YouTube to see…

Steelhead Highways

Photo by Tim Scott

Seven Steelhead Highways

Destination travel, Drake Magazine Back Issue Content 2009, Salmon/Steelhead, U.S. placesLeave a comment

Hwy 101, from Northern California to Port Angeles, Washington. No stretch of highway in the country crosses more prime steelhead water than this one. Start on California’s Klamath or Smith, then head up to Oregon’s Rogue or the great Tillamook Bay rivers like the Trask and Wilson, and then finish up on the drippy Washington…