Fishing Forum

Well greetings and salutations to start, long time lurker first time poster. I am moving to Mountain home in June from Alaska and have been reading your fine forums here on pointers, locations, tips etc... and i need you Idaho fishermen/womens opinion on something.

I have a 16 foot mercury inflatable with a 25 horse 2 stroke on it that I am considering bringing with me. How useful would that be on Idaho waters? Ultimately i plan on buying a "family" type fishing/skiing boat in about a year so parting with the raft wouldnt be to painful. Up here in Alaska there are restrictions on certain rivers like the Kenai on the use of 2 stroke engines, is there anything like that in Idaho?

Thanks in advance for any help, I look forward to re-learning how to fish bass, crappie and other warm water type fish you all have in Idaho. Having spent the last 11 years fishing in Alaska i know I am out of practice [] at least that will be my excuse to the wife, practice makes perfect honey!!!!
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Welcome to the board. I don't believe there are general restrictions like you are asking about here. There are certain waters that say electric motors only, or no boats, etc. but they area pretty minimal in number. You may want to talk with Lovemylavro about your boat when you get ready to part ways with it. I know he has been muttering about a rubber boat with a motor on it as something he might want.
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Belasko,

Thanks for the info and I will keep Lovemylavro in mind, does anyone know what would be the closest spot around mountain home to do some "after work" type fishing? I have read about CJ Strike and the Snake, not sure how far of a drive those are from Mountain Home AFB. I dont care if its just a tiny stream or a pond [], just looking for somewhere to [fishin] for a few hours after work a couple times a week. Bank fishing most likely using either fly, bobber, bottom or tossing a spinner.

Its been awhile since I have had a nice HOT summer to do some fishing and im as eager as a kid on Christmas eve if you cant tell.
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You will have several places to do a little fishing. To the east of Mt. Home you have the South Fork of the Boise, an excellent trophy (maybe not by your Alaska standards!!) trout fishery, Anderson Ranch Res., which can be productively bank-fished early in the season, but more typically is a bass/kokanee fishery, Little Camas Reservoir, good for float-tube, boat, or bank fishing for trout, and for a week-end you could head down the road a bit further to the world-famous Silver Creek, Big and Little Wood rivers, and the lunker-loaded Magic Res, good for bank, tube, or boat. To the west you have Crane Falls,Cove Arm, and C.J.Strike, good for most kinds of fish. Bank fishing is tough on these waters as a rule. The Sand Dunes park has a nice pond with bluegill, bass, etc. Further down the road you get into three reservoirs on the Duck Valley Indian Res, all excellent fishing, but too far for an afternoon. A bit further south of these is Wildhorse, south of the Idaho/Nev. border, another stellar fishery. North, about 40 miles, you have Lucky Peak and Arrowrock, great kokanee fisheries. Throw in the 1000 Springs/Hagerman area, and you can be kept busy exploring for some time. Welcome to this board and to Idaho!! Mike
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Holy Cow! Thats a great reply and thanks a ton Kodiak, definetly eager to get down there and give it a go.

I'll buy the gas who wants to do the navigating haha, I will have to school my 13 year old son on the finer art of trout fishing or there may be a few lipless trout swimming around Idaho. He is used to hooking salmon and horsing them in, the entire family loves the outdoors and from everything i have read about Idaho we will greatly enjoy camping, fishing, and hunting there.
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Welcome to the board. It will be good to have another voice from the western part of the state.

Windriver
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I am looking at Google earth and i see a body of water up north east of Mountain Home called Long Tom Res. any intel on that or is that one of the ones i read about being seasonal and it dries up after runoff?
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Welcome Rob, I too came from Alaska and moved to Mountain Home. I wish I had known about this forum before I moves as you do. Alot of great people on this site who are always willing to help out. Long Tom Res. is "fishable" the best part is not alot of people want to make the treck out there. With all the other options around Mt Home that are easier to access. Long Tom is not hard to get to but certain times of the year you need 4 wheel drive. The lake is very open with hardly any trees around it. Windy is the weather here at Mt Home, so you can imagine the open water wind on that lake. Everyone here has there favorite places to fish and you will soon find your own depending on what your looking for. I'm a trout/salmon/Steelhead fisherman so I fish CJ Strike in the fall & winter along with the Snake just below CJ Strike. It's close to home and convenient... I concentrate on Anderson Ranch in the spring/summer for trout & Kokane, again close and convenient. Kokane go deep in summer to depths of 100ft. so if you don't hit them in the spring and fall you need a downrigger. Anyway good luck, this is a great place for a family and the fishing/hunting is good.
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I too am an Alaska transplant. The fishing is much different here, but I like it. There is sturgeon fishing near MT Home so you can get the thrill of hooking a dinosaur.

Your rubber boat will work just fine on the majority of the lakes and reservoirs and there are parts of the Snake that you'll be able to take it on. There are not near the restrictions on motors here like there are in AK. Idaho let you run jet boats on most navigatable rivers (unlike those dang Kenai River restrictions!)

Welcome to Idaho, I hope it treats you well and you (and your family) enjoy it!
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Thanks for the replies and info all, yeah i know of about 5 more people that are PCSing down to Mountain Home, its the running joke right now that it will be Elmendorf south down there. I will probably inflate the raft and toss it on Craigslist just to see if i get any hits and if not bring it with me. It has served me well moose hunting and trolling for silvers in the bay down at Seward.

I grew up in New Mexico and i loved having hot lazy days to fish for Bass, Bluegill, Crappie, Trout, Catfish, Northern Pike etc... Dont get me wrong Alaskan fishing is one of a kind but I am tired of trying to shove all the outdooor activities i love into the 3 months we have up here that the weather is decent enough to do them in.
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I've owned an Achilles inflatable since 2000 and have had it out at least a time or two in most every body of water mentioned in the earlier posts. One that didn't get mentioned but that can be worth the effort to get to is Deadwood. There are a couple of advantages to having the inflatable that I've noticed. Not having to trailer it is nice, especially when driving on skinny winding bumpy dirt roads like all of the ones that lead to Deadwood. The other is that it's not unusual for the boat ramps to be out of the water here later in the season. It's nice having a boat that you can more or less launch from anywhere. I have a little 5 horse two stroke outboard myself and there aren't any regulation in the state preventing you from using them here in Idaho yet. Best of luck with your fishing adventures, Idaho may not be on par with Alaska in certain respects, but it's probably as close as you're gonna get in the lower 48. Don't overlook the alpine lakes, they're a treat in themselves and even though you won't be able to launch a boat on them, it's another aspect of Idaho fishing that certainly merits some attention.
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