Fly-fishing intern visits Idaho
IDAHO FALLS – Luca Adelfio is one of the legions of interns trying to build up a résumé this summer.
His home and office: a 16-year-old truck with no air conditioning and a broken fuel gauge. His business card: “Luckiest Guy in America.” His assignment: Fly fish the top rivers in the country.
“Idaho to me is kind of on the way to and from the Pacific Northwest,” Adelfio told the Idaho State Journal. “I’m excited to be back in the Rockies. It’s my favorite place to fish.”
He’s fished the Henry’s Fork of the Snake River in eastern Idaho and Silver Creek in central Idaho, two of the state’s fishing gems.
Adelfio, 23, graduated from Colorado College in 2005 with a degree in biology and has worked for the U.S. Forest Service restoring bull trout habitat.
Then Trout Unlimited, whose stated mission is to “conserve, protect and restore North America’s trout and salmon fisheries and their watersheds,” decided it needed a way to survey the organization’s numerous river restoration projects around the country and draw viewers to its Web site.
Luca got the job. His job description reads: “TU’s official traveling blogger, Luca’s charge is to talk with grassroots volunteers, tour restoration efforts and, of course, fish trout waters across the country.”
“We were looking around, and we had all sorts of ideas on what to put on his business card,” said T. Grand, secretary for the TU National Chapter. “Blogger? Ambassador? We said he’s the luckiest guy in America. He’s got a fisheries background. He was chapter secretary for the National Capitol Chapter at age 16. He’s the real deal.”
Luca’s findings and fishing exploits can be viewed at www.tu.org. His reports were delayed for a time when someone stole his laptop from his truck in Pennsylvania, but TU sent him a replacement.
“I was most surprised by the Ozarks,” Adelfio said. “There were times when we were catching fish on every cast. The Driftless was fun in Wisconsin. At Black Canyon of the Gunnison River (near Montrose, Colo.), I caught all brown trout. It used to be a great rainbow fishery, but whirling disease has hit it hard.”
He recently traveled to Idaho Falls to join TU members on a survey trip along the Little Lost River in central Idaho.
His biggest fish so far was a 22-inch trout from the Bighorn River near Billings.
“In my mind, it’s kind of the benchmark for tailwater fisheries,” Adelfio said.
A tailwater fishery is a river that emerges from a dam and often produces good fishing because of cold water and relatively consistent flows.
After his internship ends, Adelfio said he plans to return to Big Sky, Mont., and his winter job as a ski patroller at the Moonlight Basin Ski Resort.