Lost River Outfitters

About

Lost River Outfitters in Ketchum, Idaho, operates at the center of the Sun Valley fly fishing universe — a block from the main street of a resort town that sits within thirty minutes of Silver Creek and the Wood River, two of the most celebrated spring creek fisheries in the American West. The shop takes its name from the Lost River Range and the Lost River watershed that drains the high desert east of Ketchum, though the waters it serves most directly are the classic spring creek fisheries that have made this corner of Idaho a destination for serious dry fly anglers for generations.

Silver Creek is the star. The Nature Conservancy's Silver Creek Preserve protects the most celebrated section of this spring creek, a flat-water fishery where enormous rainbow and brown trout feed selectively on tiny insects in clear, cold water that reveals every approach mistake and rewards precise presentation with the kind of fish that most anglers encounter only once or twice in a lifetime of fly fishing. Lost River Outfitters serves as the primary guide and gear resource for anglers approaching Silver Creek from the Ketchum end, offering the fly selection calibrated to the creek's specific hatches — the Baetis of early season, the PMDs of summer, the blue-winged olives of fall — alongside guides who have spent enough mornings on the creek to know where the large fish hold and how the hatches develop through the day.

The Wood River, which runs through Ketchum itself, provides more accessible fishing for anglers who want moving water and willing trout rather than the test of Silver Creek's demanding flat sections. The Big Lost River further east and the backcountry streams draining the Sawtooth Mountain front round out a region that offers more variety than most visiting anglers expect from a destination they know primarily by the name Silver Creek.

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