Cecil True of Spokane, Washington, holds a giant Kamloops trou 



World's Biggest Trout 



OO 

 by Bob Miller. . . photograph by Ross Hall 



WHEN Idaho sportsmen stocked Pend Oreille Lake with 

 Kamloops trout, they weren't expecting miracles, but a 

 miracle happened. Lake conditions were so favorable that the 

 fish reached phenomenal size even the whopper shown here 

 is commonplace. Catches here have made northern Idaho the 

 unchallenged Rainbow Trout Capital of the World. 



The panorama that rolls past the windows of your car as you 

 drive Highways 95 or lo-A through northern Idaho is pure 

 Technicolor. This land of shining waters and big mountains 

 includes the ten counties which form the long narrow panhandle 

 separating Washington and Montana. It is an area of unspoiled 

 beauty. 



In it are the Bitterroot Mountains on the Idaho-Montana 

 border; the Selkirks, rolling in blue waves up into Canada; the 

 Cabinet Range, shouldering down into the Coeur d'Alenes; and 

 the majestic slopes of the vast Selway-Bitterroot primitive area. 



In this land of mountains are three of the grandest lakes ever 

 fished by man. Southernmost of them is Coeur d'Alene, and far 

 to the north is Priest Lake, nestled in the Selkirks. In the middle 

 is the Big Hole Pend Oreille Lake, the Rainbow Trout Capital 

 of the World. 



Pend Oreille defies superlatives. Nearly two hundred miles 

 of shoreline circle its tremendously deep water. In it are the 

 world's largest rainbow trout. 



In 1942, the sportsmen of Bonner County, much of which is 

 under the cold, green water of Pend Oreille Lake, obtained 

 some Kamloops trout from British Columbia and planted them. 

 Conditions in the big lake were so ideal that the fish hurriedly 

 outgrew their Canadian forebears. 



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