Roger Phillips photo. By Roger Phillips They’re big, they’re hard-fighting, and they’re one of Idaho’s most overlooked trophy fishing opportunities, but many anglers are still confused about whether they can target bull trout for catch-and-release fishing. The short answer is yes. When bull trout were listed as threatened under the federal Endangered Species Act in…
My heart raced as we proceeded down the almost 15-mile Swanson River Road. We kept expecting to be turned around any minute. Knowing there were so many lake options with confirmed populations of char, I had a lot of faith one would offer me the opportunity to bring an Arctic char to hand. The problem was, the bumpy pothole strewn dirt road was, as far as I knew, the only artery to the lake systems. If this fire got out of control, as the 2019 fire did, I could be shut out.
“When we think about people, and the ‘habitat’ people utilize, we don’t just look at the superhighways where they can easily be seen traveling,” he said. “People don’t live on the freeways, people don’t ‘spawn’ on the freeways or on their commute.”
Dolly Varden are a close relative to bull trout and it wasn’t until 1978 that the two species were confirmed to be distinct. In the continental United States, Dolly Varden naturally only occur in coastal the drainages of northwestern Washington from the Canadian border south through Puget Sound and south on the Olympic Peninsula to the Quinault River.
In Alaska, lake trout inhabit the deeper lowland lakes along the central Arctic coastal plain, as well as waters in the Brooks Range and Alaska Range. They are not found in the Yukon-Kuskokwim lowlands or the coastal drainages of Southeast Alaska.
“This might really, really suck,” I said to Ancans with a halfhearted laugh. We then laughed together because we knew we were already unquestionably committed
Fishing and tourism provide 26 percent of the jobs in Southeast Alaska. Logging? One percent. Chris Hunt photo. Few decisions have been as short-sighted as last year’s repeal of the Roadless Rule on Southeast Alaska’s Tongass National Forest, which helps explain why 96 percent of all public comment opposed the repeal. When large-scale logging first…
