Idaho is home to at least three variants of the cutthroat trout–the Bonneville, the Yellowstone, and the Westslope. Westslope cutthroat, or oncorhynchus lewisi, is our variant, the one that swims in our waters and yearns to be pulled in by a fly rod. That last part, of course, is a lie but they are a great, dumb, hungry fish that may just be the most beautiful trout in the world if you ask the right person (read: me).They are one of our wonderful native trout in the county, along with the bull trout and the rainbow, and are distinguishable from the other fish in our waters by the yellow brown coloring of their bodies, spotting that tightens up as it goes back towards the tail, and of course by the eponymous red-orange slashes under their lower jaw .
While they are not as feisty as a brookie, strong as a brown trout, or common as the rainbow, they are our fish. At least to me.
It is all a personal opinion, but as someone who has caught quite a bit of trout in Montana, Idaho, Washington and Oregon – I should really get out more – no one fish brings me more joy than catching a large Westslope cutthroat out of one of our creeks or down on the north fork of the Coeur d’Alene.
Obviously, I very much prefer to catch native trout over any introduced species, but the Westslope cutthroat has a sort of mystique added on to it to me. I mean, Lewis and Clark ate true native cutthroat out of the rivers in our great northern states up here. The cutthroat trout filled rivers provided food for generation after generation.
While they provided food for many of the indigenous peoples of our area and our ancestors who decided to steamroll through the land, the cutthroat had their real tragic story fulfilled in the late 1800s to more recently like the 1960-70s, when the brook trout was introduced into our great state of Idaho.
While the brook trout is a huge threat to Idaho’s great native Bull trout, they are also a threat to our Westslope cutthroat.
Brookies have the ability to cross-breed with the Bull trout, and they out-compete our native fish greatly. This is due to brook trout being aggressive, emerging earlier as they spawn in the fall while the cutthroat spawn in spring – a perfect time for young brook trout to feed on their eggs – and by them just being big bullies.
The brook trout like to hang out in mid-elevation streams and push out the native fish either downstream, or worse, upstream higher and higher where the displaced fish will struggle with shorter seasons, less food and less than ideal living grounds.
Now, there are ways that we can help to combat this overtaking of our beautiful native trout. Many of our creeks are full of brook trout, including highly visited creeks such as Smith Creek and Snow Creek. One of the ways that we can help lower the population of brook trout is by practicing catch-and-keep with them. The brook trout is a delicate, flakey and delicious trout to eat and provides a good pan-fried meal with any of them eight inches or up.
I prefer this very much over the other option: tossing them ashore when one brings one up from the water.
Now, I know people around here seem to not mind doing that, especially to the northern pikeminnow that overrun many spots in the Kootenai River. Hell, I even used to do it on float trips where we would catch them, bonk them, and throw them to the birds.
However much we hate the pikeminnow – especially their lousy ability to fight in which they are aggressive on the line for about two seconds before they drop limp and let you drag them in – but the pikeminnow is a native fish to our waters.
Yes, they are not worth squat to eat (they are even terrible to smoke really, unlike the other “trash” fish in our waters, the Mountain Whitefish), they eat trout eggs and they are just not fun to catch. But they are native, unlike the brook trout. But no matter how native they are, I can’t imagine the type of angler who could pull up a brook trout and admire their beautiful markings and aggressive fight on a fly rod and think to themselves, “yeah, I’ll just let this fish suffocate on the shore.”
If you catch one and want it out of the creek, do yourself a favor and eat it. Put at least a little respect on that gorgeous trout.
However, another way to combat the brook trout population is pesticide. Idaho Fish & Game are testing the waters by bringing back stream treatment with rotenone, which they began in September of last year in Binarch Creek, a tributary to the Priest River. The brook trout was introduced in the 1940s and over time, as one would expect, they ended up displacing the native Westslope cutthroat throughout the creek.
Rotenone is a natural pesticide made from tropical plant roots such as from jicama along with some legumes. It has been used around the world for decades. For a local success story, in 2010 the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife used rotenone in Mann Lake to kill off a large population of invasive goldfish that had established itself. Now, that lake is home to the Lahontan Cutthroat Trout that was threatened by the ever-expanding population.
The rotenone treatment was deemed a huge success after killing around 190,000 goldfish and fathead minnows while only wiping out three cutthroat in the process. With an impressive outcome like that, along with numerous others throughout the world and over decades, I like to think that Fish & Game will find great success in their attempt in Binarch Creek of giving the native trout some breathing room to flourish once again.
I have not had any confirmation, as I haven’t asked the question yet to Rob Ryan, but I am guessing if this rotenone treatment proves successful in Binarch that they will end up treating more creeks in Northern Idaho which would include numerous of our wonderful creeks that have been brook trout breeding grounds for years.
Personally, I would be quite happy to let the Westslope cutthroat thrive again.
But I would absolutely miss some great moments like I have every summer where I end up tricking a large brook trout out from under some overhanging logs with an #14 Adams and having that fight me on my little 3 wt fiberglass rod. There is just something special about it. He made a pretty good trout dip when I got home as well.
Back to the cutthroat though. Up here, we do have what are called cutbows (a rainbow and cutthroat trout hybrid) in our waters but I suspect that there are not as many as the average angler seems to think there are.
Most of the time when someone I am chatting with tells me about a massive cutbow that they caught out of the Kootenai, I really can’t help but think that they just want to say they caught something more exotic and exciting than their umpteenth rainbow trout for the year. Not saying that they didn’t catch one, but trying to distinguish the difference can be quite a chore unless you are some sort of fisheries biologist, ichthyologist, or savant.
Two of the most glaring indications is it may look identical to a rainbow but have the red-orange slash under its jaw, or it may look like a rainbow trout but with a lot less spots especially on the lower half of the fish’s body. But honestly, most of the time, just know it was probably some plain Jane rainbow that you pulled out.
I will end this column with a short story about the cutthroat.
They are not necessarily a picky and fickle eater, but they have their days. Usually, if you aren’t fishing on a river like the St. Joe where they see imitation fly after imitation fly day after day, they are usually a pretty easy fish to fool.
Early in this column’s history, I wrote of a fly fishing trip to the St Joe called “Skunked by the Joe.” In it, I described a trip to St. Maries I took to spend a few nights with one of my best childhood buddies (and occasional fishing buddy) Andrew Galloway and we tried all day to catch something.
The day was sunny and clear of the smoke in a summer full of fires, the water cool and calm, and the fish were just not biting anything. Caddis and olives were in the air, but the fish didn’t want them. Ants, hoppers, and bees were on the water. The fish could see right through us. After hours on the water, and a good five minutes swimming in it after we had decided the day was a bust, we went home to a fridge full of adult beverages and a night of reminiscing and watching random videos.
The next day when I was driving to a birthday party that I really didn’t want to go to in Priest River – I was my wife and son’s ride home – I stopped by a nice bend in the north fork of the Coeur d’Alene and ended up landing a good 13-inch Westslope cutthroat.
The punchline to my story was that I had waded too deep with my phone the day earlier, and no clear picture was to be had due to my phone’s camera drowning in the residual water. I got a text from Andrew a few days later that subverted my punchline down to a weak joke as I saw him crouched on a bend of the river that we had fished a few days earlier with a bigger cutthroat than mine and a smarmy grin on his face. I put my phone down, sighed, rigged up my 4 wt and told my wife I was going to be gone for a while as I grabbed the keys.
Tight lines out there, friends.
Good article. It seems to me if I remember right that IFG introduced Brook Trout into some of the alpine lakes in Boundary County as they could survive the hike in, in a backpack. Another thing I vaguely remember is that a lot of beaver dams in the drainages on the west side were eliminated because of flooding concerns at the time. Who determined that move is something I can’t recollect but I remember hearing about that. Beaver ponds are an excellent habitat for our native trout.
Bruce Whittaker
Naples,Idaho
Bruce-
Thanks for the comment. And yes, stumbling upon a beaver dam in one of our creeks up here is like finding the gold at the end of a rainbow. There aren’t too many that survive our typically high and fast spring run-off, but when they do, it really is one of the best places to fish.
James Standal