A Family Pack Trip

For a few years now, my siblings and I have nagged our parents to go on a pack trip. A pack trip is basically a backpack trip into the backcountry where you ride horses instead of walking. We have a small ranch and love horses. Our whole family loves to camp. And pack trips are a kind of tradition in our family. Why not combine all three?

- William Carter

Last summer our parents finally conceded to our nagging and plans were made to visit a mountain lake near Darlington, Idaho.

Since we didn’t own enough horses to pack in all our gear to the lake, we’d camp by the outlet creek, a little way down the road from the trailhead, and ride horses to the lake for the day. It wasn’t exactly a pack trip, but it was a camping trip with horses, and that was close enough for us.

We planned to go for three days: Day one, set up camp and fish the creek; Day two, ride to the lake, fish and swim; Day three, pack up and head home.

After we got to the campsite and got set up, it was time to fish. While I prefer hunting, when there’s no seasons open, I happily turn to fishing.

As much fun as it can be to reel in a lunker rainbow trout, nothing is better to me than catching brook trout in small creeks.

In our area, these little non-native trout have been poisoned in some creeks to allow native bull (Dolly Varden) trout to return to their original range. The result is no fish in those small creeks.

I care about bull trout, but the poisoning of brookies had very negative effects. Bull trout get quite big. Tiny creeks just don’t have the habitat for larger fish like bull trout, and this gets overlooked.

Brook trout do fine in the really small creeks that still have them. The holes I fish are seldom more than 2 feet deep and 2-1/2 feet in diameter. Brook trout living in lakes can get large, but those in creeks stay small. I have yet to catch one more than a foot long. But they are incredibly tasty — no “fishy” taste.