Clearwater River

Most anglers make the drive to the lower Clearwater for one fish: the B-run steelhead. These are the largest summer-run steelhead south of the Canadian border — ocean-going rainbows that average 10 to 13 pounds, run 31 to 34 inches, and give up a fish over 20 pounds somewhere on the river every season. They push in off the Snake at Lewiston in the fall and stack in the broad, even-depthed runs from the 95 Bridge up through Spalding, Lenore, and Peck. This is spey country in the truest sense: 13- to 15-foot two-handers, floating lines, and flies swung on a 70- to 80-degree downstream angle. The Red Shed Fly Shop out on Big Canyon Road near Peck is the spiritual center of it, and the fall Spey Gathering at the Lenore rest stop is the unofficial season opener.

The river fishes in two distinct modes. From September through March it's a swung-fly steelhead fishery on a huge canvas — the channel runs 100 to 300 yards wide, side-drifting from jet boats is the numbers game, and the swing is the purist's game. Then there's a shoulder-season trout window most out-of-staters miss: late May to mid-July and again from mid-September into October, the main stem gives up dry-fly westslope cutthroat and rainbows on PMDs, caddis, and Yellow Sallies. In the dead of summer the trout largely abandon the main stem — July and August water temperatures climb past 60°F and the fish retreat to the cold Lochsa and Selway upstream — so plan trout trips around the runoff drop, not the peak of summer.

A couple of things worth knowing. The North Fork Clearwater joins at Ahsahka, just below Orofino, and it comes out of Dworshak Dam — so everything downstream of that confluence carries a slug of regulated, dam-tempered water on top of the freestone Lochsa and Selway flow above it. That's why the Peck and Spalding gauges read roughly double the Orofino gauge. Spring runoff off the Bitterroot high country blows the main stem out and browns it, and it typically doesn't clear and settle until late June or July. Highway 12 parallels the river the whole way from Lewiston up, so wade access and boat ramps are everywhere — the trade-off is that you're never far from road noise. When the main stem is off-color or too warm, the cold tributaries (Lochsa, Selway, North Fork) are the fallback.