I love elk hunting.

    It’s the ultimate outdoor adventure, but not far ahead of a good back country backpacking/fly fishing excursion. My youngest daughter Kolby, who we call Koko, has been wanting to go on a trip this summer but was working a few weeks ago the first time I went.

    No problem, we just scheduled another one.

    Last Sunday as soon as we got out of church we jumped in the truck and headed out. We hoped to escape the smoke that has plagued the valley the last few weeks, but we unfortunately passed a few fires heading up and still saw smoke when we hit our destination.

    We hit the trailhead before dark, got our packs loaded and took off. Due to the unbelievable amount of wolves in the area I loaded up my .44 mag. with Hornady Vital Shocks and threw Koko a .357 mag. with Hornady XTP’s. We hit the trail and as usual, Koko jumped out in the lead.

    Gee, am I that out of shape or just old? She doesn’t hike near as much as me and yet just skipped down the trail like she was on a Sunday walk in the park.

    About halfway in it got dark. For whatever reason I like to hike without a light, but pretty soon it got so dark that we had to turn on our head lamps. If I turn it to the pulsating option it makes me nauseated. Does it do that to everyone?

    We hit my camp spot and no one was there. In fact, at the trail head there was only one other vehicle. Why do people live in Idaho and not get out and enjoy the great outdoors? That’s almost a sin, isn’t it?

    I had two new tents to test. An Alps Mountaineering Lynx, which I’d used twice before and is super easy to set up. I’d also just received a Paha Que’ Bear Creek Solo model. Anytime you are using new gear, always set it up at home prior to going out. But this tent I had just received and didn’t have time to do so. It set up easily, though, and before you knew it camp was up and Kolby was cooking S’mores. I don’t care how far we’re hiking, a lack of S’mores is the fastest recipe for mutiny since Captain Bligh hit the high seas.

    We were dead tired so we scarfed down our S’mores and hit the sack. I had a cool little Alps Mountaineering sleeping bag that had a draw string on the top and is like a warm weather mummy bag. I’ve always felt confined in a mummy bag,  but I like this one. The nights are semi warm, but I did wake up a little cool early in the mornings as I had forgotten my longhandles to sleep in.

    I let Kolby sleep in and went downstream to a big hole and tied on a black beadheaded wooly booger. To get down deeper I slipped on a 1/64th ounce bullet weight. The bullet weight casts easier than when using a split shot or matchstick weight.

    I flipped out the above set-up and in a hot second had a 19-inch Bull Trout tugging on the other end. I soon netted him and was wide awake. I caught a smaller cutthroat and then hooked into a hog. I guided him up, but after three of four passes I still failed to net him. He was a good 22 inches long. Finally I screwed around long enough and he was able to snap me off.

    I went back to camp, woke up Koko and gave her some hot chocolate and flavored oatmeal. We got geared up for the day and hit the trail. I had one hole at a logjam downstream a good ways where I had 18 hits a few weeks ago, but we never made it down that far.

    Another good hole that had produced a 19-inch cutthroat last year and an 18-inch one a few weeks ago was slow that day. We nibbled on wild raspberries as we walked from hole to hole. The huckleberries had disappeared but there seemed to be more raspberries this time.

    We hit a nondescript hole and right away a huge cutthroat slammed Kolby’s elk hair caddis.

    The fight was on.

    I coached her on how to land him and she did an excellent job. Wow what a fish! He was a huge 18-inch, nice, mature back country native fish.

    Awesome.

    That one fish made the trip all worthwhile to me. He was absolutely beautiful and as usual, there was no way that I could capture his beauty on film.

    We fished the rest of the day and finally made it back to camp dead tired, but peaked out. I’d packed an assortment of candy — cinnamon bears, peanut butter cups, mints, gummy bears and Starbucks coffee. So we’d eaten like kings, or queens according to whom you asked, but when we hit camp we were hungry.

    For supper we voted on Mountain House Beef Stroganoff. Wow, it was good. If you take your kid on a trip have some good food so they enjoy the trip and save the pickled pigs feet for when you go by yourself.

    What to do for dessert? S’mores of course since Kolby was in charge. We watched a bat swoop around eating mosquitos and looked at the stars and then tumbled off to the sack.

    We fished every day and had a blast. The last day a group of Youth Corp trail workers showed up and wanted to know if they could share camp with us. We were leaving that day anyway so we said sure. I was fishing in the hole at camp and hung a nice 17-inch cutthroat and had one of the kids take a pic for me as Kolby was reading a book.

    I’ve got to get a better camera. My digital delays about 90 percent of the time, which is a major problem if you’re trying to snap a fast pic of a slippery fish and get him back in the water before he gets stressed. Last trip all my fish above 15-inches shot out of my hand before I could get a pic. If I take a throw away Kodak they’re not on an SD card so I can’t email them in with my articles.

    The time had come to hit the trail. My pack seemed heavier than when we had gone in. We ran out of water halfway out, so Kolby went down to the stream and brought us up some more. This trip, instead of using filtered water bottles, we were using the Aquamira filtered straws. They’re lightweight and have the same filtration capabilities. We sucked down some water and hit it again.

    Not 200 yards from the trailhead there was a bear cub up in a tree. The sow and other cub were 50-100 yards down the mountain. We took some pics and he started bawling, so we headed on. As we drove off a young wolf loped across the trail in front of us.

    What a great time we’d had.