Steps to find your ideal stream

  1. Find a major river.
    1. Go to the Idaho Fishing Planner.
    2. Determine whether the river has the fish you're targeting.
  2. Locate tributaries & streams connected to that river.
    1. Use the Idaho Fishing Planner to see if there is a survey of the steam you're looking at. There may also be special regulations to observe.
  3. Determine the land designation type for that area using the Idaho Hunt Planner tool.
  4. Find access points and roads.
    • Tip: With remote streams you may not have to worry about private property as much.
  5. When you find a creek or stream that looks promising, go check it out in person.
    1. Flip over some rocks and investigate what bugs are relevant.
    2. Find spots to camp. BLM land is ideal since it is public and free to camp on.
    3. Determine whether river will be safe the day you're going to fish.
      1. Find the nearest monitoring location on the USGS flows website.
      2. Look at the flows for the last year and see how they fluctuate; this gives you an idea of what month to fish that spot. Remember that under 600 CFS is ideal, 700 to 800 CFS is wadeable, but starting to get sketchy.
        • Tip: If the monitoring location is downstream of your creek, the creek should be at a lower flow rate.
  6. If a creek is very long (10 - 40 miles), then hone down 10 spots you might want to fish in a weekend. Use Google maps to identify deep pools or very nice riffles. Mark those spots on your map app.
  7. Save your map data to an offline map.