How to Find Remote Fishing Spots in Idaho
Steps to find your ideal stream
- Find a major river.
- Go to the Idaho Fishing Planner.
- Determine whether the river has the fish you're targeting.
- Locate tributaries & streams connected to that river.
- 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.
- Determine the land designation type for that area using the Idaho Hunt Planner tool.
- Find access points and roads.
- Tip: With remote streams you may not have to worry about private property as much.
- When you find a creek or stream that looks promising, go check it out in person.
- Flip over some rocks and investigate what bugs are relevant.
- Find spots to camp. BLM land is ideal since it is public and free to camp on.
- Determine whether river will be safe the day you're going to fish.
- Find the nearest monitoring location on the USGS flows website.
- 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.
- 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.
- Save your map data to an offline map.