The South Fork below Palisades is the best big-river cutthroat fishery left in the West, and it's a working drift-boat river — long fertile runs through cottonwood canyon, native Yellowstone cutthroat that eat dries with their whole heart, plus browns and rainbows. The salmonfly hatch in June is a circus in the best way. There's a serious conservation story here: rainbows hybridize with the native cutthroat, and Idaho manages hard to protect the pure fish, so respect the rules and treat the cutthroat as the irreplaceable natives they are. Flow comes off the dam, not the sky.
The South Fork of the Snake comes out of Palisades Reservoir and runs through eastern Idaho as the great cutthroat stronghold of the region — a big, braided, cottonwood-bottomed river that carves through a basalt canyon below Conant before spreading into island country on its way to the Henrys Fork. The flow is dam-governed at the top but the river fishes like a freestone, fast and broad over rounded cobble, the side channels and seams holding native Yellowstone cutthroat alongside browns and rainbows. The cottonwood gallery forest along it is the finest left in the West, and in late summer the cutthroat tip up for hoppers along the grassy banks. The bed is volcanic cobble and gravel; the braids make for endless water. Wading is honest freestone work, and the side channels are kinder than the heavy main stem.
Wading: Heavy main stem, kinder side channels
- Mixed
- Partly confined
- Pool riffle
- Large river
