Canadian shore lunches are legendary, and for good reason: They’re awesome! I experienced my first Canadian shore lunch 34 years ago. My father-in-law took the family to Flin Flon, Manitoba, fishing forever. The first year that Katy and I got married, he took six of us. What a great trip.

Every day at lunch, we’d pull up on the shore, build a fire and he’d fry up a great meal which fried northern pike as the main course. Let’s fast forward to last week. My daughter and I just got back from a fishing trip to the historic Plummer’s Lodges in the Northwest Territories. I’ll write an article on that trip at a later time, but right now I want to write about the shore lunches we had.

Every day, our guide, Darrel Smith, would keep back one of the smaller lake trout to cook for lunch. We were fishing on Great Slave Lake, and about noon we’d pull up on some small island or bank where there was a semi-flat spot. We’d build a fire ring with rocks and whip out a fire.

Darrel kept a big metal grate in the boat that we’d lay on the rocks. He had a tow sack that he’d keep all of his utensils and which included some big frying pans. He also had a couple of camp chairs for me and Kolby.

Next he’d fillet the fish. On this trip, we were testing out the Smith’s Consumer Products Lawai 7-inch and 9-inch knives. He’d prepare the fish in a different manner, all of which were excellent. I don’t know how many different recipes he has.

Of course, the fried fish were excellent and to die for. He had a bag of dry batter and would throw the fillets into the bag and shake it up to coat them and then throw them in a skillet of hot oil.

But first he’d fry the potatoes and slice onions. I know food always tastes better in the outdoors, and you always eat more but I’m serious — he made the best potatoes I’ve ever had. I don’t know if it was the seasoning or the environment, but I would have been happy with just the potatoes.

When the potatoes were done, he’d put a colander over a metal gallon bucket and pour the potatoes into the colander. Of course, the colander would catch the potatoes and the grease would drip into the metal bucket.

Then he’d pour the grease back into the pan to fry the fish. He’d open a can of beans and a can of corn and set them on the side of the grill to begin heating up. When it was all done, he’d set out the spread on a big rock, and we’d have a buffet fit for kings. We’d eat until we were about to die.

But we didn’t eat fried fish every day (although we could have, and I would have been happy). One day he did a baker. On a big sheet of foil, he poured a tub of salsa and then laid in the fillets. He then wrapped it up and baked it on the grill. When it was about done, he poured a pound of grated cheese on top and refolded the foil and let it melt. Kolby really liked the baker.

After lunch, Kolby asked him if he’d ever had teriyaki fish. He replied, “Do you want teriyaki tomorrow?” She said, “I’m good with whatever.” The next day, he spoiled us with a teriyaki shore lunch. It was to die for.

I was amazed at how organized and fast he whipped out a shore lunch. He was super efficient and has a good system down. The fishing was unbelievable, but the shore lunches alone almost made it worth going on the trip.

After the trip, I got wondering. Why don’t we do shore lunches in Idaho? Even Huckleberry Finn and Jim knew that fresh fish was the ultimate.

Tom Claycomb lives in Idaho and has outdoors columns in newspapers in Alaska, Idaho, Utah, Nevada, Colorado and Louisiana.

While conducting seminars at The Great Northwest Outdoor Expo, I met Kory Richardson, the owner of Lucky Tackle Co. Of course, you know what happens when two gung-ho fishermen get together! We were soon lining up a fishing trip. Gee, I’ve had seminars, hunting and fishing trips nonstop since the expo, so it took us over a month to finally be able to nail down a date.

I met him before daylight, threw my gear in his truck and off we went. I love fishing and hunting with someone who is passionate about what they pursue. Even on a tough day, you learn so much from them. On the drive, he caught me up on the basics. It may sound strange, but I’ve never gotten to fish for kokanee salmon, so it was a whole new world for me. As stated above, Kory is very knowledgeable, so much so that he owns a kokanee lure company. Someday soon, I want to interview him. I’ll pick his brain and we’ll all learn from that article.

If you’re a salmon fisherman, then you know that there are five kinds of Pacific salmon, and they all have two names.

• Chinook: Kings
• Silvers: Cohos
• Dog salmon: Chum
• Sockeye: Reds
• Pink: Humpies

To my understanding, there are three lakes in Idaho where you can fish for kokanee: Deadwood Reservoir, Arrow Rock and Anderson Ranch. A kokanee is a land-locked sockeye. The sockeye is the most desired eating fish to a lot of people.

We arrived at the lake, and it was a beautiful day. Wow, we’re lucky to live in Idaho. With the spring rains, we’re having an exceptionally green summer, so things were green on the drive up, and then of course how can you not love fishing in the mountains? The scenery was beautiful.

If you’ve never trolled for kokanee, the tackle is unique. First, Kory tied on an attractant spinner, which looks like a big spoon and is called a dodger.

Then he tied a leader to the dodger with one of his flies on the end. Kokanee feed on plankton, so they don’t hit your fly because they’re eating — they hit because they’re mad at it.

One thing that Kory is fanatic about is his scent. After fishing with him, I want to experiment in all aspects of my fishing adventures. He uses rubber gloves when he is handling his flies or hooking on bait. He swears by how important it is to keep bad scents off your flies. Think about it. How can a Chinook know which river to turn up while heading back to their birthplace? The experts say by the scents of the minerals out of the rivers.

I’ve only the last few years started using bait on my crappie jigs, and it helps for sure. This year, I’ve started using Pautzke Crappie Fireballs. I may experiment on controlling and using scents on all of my fishing adventures. What about flies even in the backcountry? Soon I’m jumping on a plane to the historic Plummer’s Lodge in The Northwest Territories. I think I’ll pack a bottle of Pautzke’s Crappie Fire Balls. It will be interesting to test.

The next thing that hit me as weird was how flimsy of rods Kory used. They were as light weight and flimsy as crappie rods. He explained that they have super soft mouths so don’t horse them like you do a bass and sure don’t set the hook. He said the best method is to just lift the rod tip and start reeling, just like you do on crappie of you’ll rip the hook out.

He uses down riggers to get down deeper in the water column. Of course to find where they were, we had all of the lines at varying depths. There is so much more to cover, but we are about out of room. We’ll get in deeper detail when I do an interview with Kory.

Not long after starting, we had a big hit. We thought we had a lunker, and we did. A lunker pikeminnow, that is. We hit it hard, but it was a tough day. We only ended up netting one. But hey, that’s fishing. It happens sometimes.

In case you wonder why I am making such a big deal about kokanee fishing, it’s only because you haven’t eaten one. Brine them for three to five hours and smoke them on a plank. Your wife will be kicking you off the couch and telling you to go get her more kokanees. Or you may be lucky like Kory. He assured me that his girlfriend Janelle would be claiming the reason that we hadn’t caught more was because she wasn’t with us!

Tom Claycomb lives in Idaho and has outdoors columns in newspapers in Alaska, Idaho, Utah, Nevada, Colorado and Louisiana.

A lot of our hunts can be pretty intense and exhausting. Some elk hunts, by the third day I’m so sore I can hardly crawl out of my sleeping bag. You’ll be up two hours before daylight, hiking hard all day scrambling up and down mountains and hit camp well after dark. I love elk hunting, but it’s tough.

So if you need a low-key, lotta-shooting hunt, check out pigeon hunting. They favor an agricultural type of setting. They love roosting in barns. They make a mess when roosting on the farmers equipment and spread diseases by messing in the feed bunks at feedlots.

Very seldom will a farmer or rancher turn you away from hunting pigeons on his property. Especially if you tell him you’re hunting with airguns. I received two airguns from Pyramyd Air. THe Ruger 10/22 Air Rifle is the spitting image of its cousin, the famous Ruger 10/22. I could not wait to test it out. Who doesn’t love the 10/22? It is the most popular .22 ever made.

The Ruger 10/22 Air Rifle is a CO2 air gun. It is a pellet gun powered by two 12-grain CO2 canisters and comes in the popular .177 caliber. It is a plinkers delight.

I also received the Gamp Swarm Whisper. It is a break action .177 pellet gun, but is unique in that it utilizes a 10-round rotary magazine. If you’ve ever hunted with a break action then you know how frustrating it can be digging a pellet out of your pocket and fumbling it around while the pigeons are in attack mode. The designers at Gamo were ingenious to come up with the clip. I believe they were the first ones to do so on a break action. Look on gunpowdermagazine.com for an upcoming product review on the Swarm Whisper.

My wife, Katy, went with me on this hunt. We sighted in the two airguns and then hit the feedlot. There were more pigeons than I’d ever seen before, so the shooting was good. We hit the barns first, but they spooked out before we could drill any. After spooking out, they landed on the nearby silos. We picked off one, waited a few minutes and a few more would land. This repeated itself for 20 to 30 minutes, and then we went out to hit the feedlot.

There were a few Eurasian doves, but we didn’t get any of them. The pigeon shooting was hot. I bet we had well over 100 shots. We’d catch them feeding on dropped feed in the alleyways or out feeding among the cattle. With an air gun, the cattle never blinked an eye — air guns are a great way to hunt around livestock. There is no loud report to spook the cattle or horses. I’ve shot thousands of times around livestock and never spooked them. Of course, as a kid, our cattle and horse got shot around so much they never even flinched, much less spooked. They got used to it.

After firing a few shots, the pigeons started getting semi spooky. But right now, there are a lot of young ones out there, so they’re a little slower thinking.

If you decide to grab an air gun and go hunting, I’d recommend a break action. They’re more powerful than a lot of other models of pellet guns, and with the 10-shot rotary magazine, the Gamo Swarm Whisper is a good choice. I would suggest you look at the Swarm Maxxim, though, since it is available in a .22 caliber. The .22 caliber will flatten a pigeon better. And grab some good pellets. Something like the Crosman Premier Ultra Magnum 10.5-grain pellets.

For whatever reason, many people seem to freak out the over the suggestion of eating pigeons. They are just an over-sized dove, and like I said above, we encountered a lot of young ones on this hunt. They are more tender than an older bird. The weather is warm right now, so it would be smart to take a cooler to help preserve them while out in the field.

I make all of mine into poppers. I slice each breast into two or three pieces and marinate in some kind of vinaigrette salad dressing for a couple of hours. I then slice a piece of bacon in half and wrap it around a piece of breast, slice of jalapeno and a slice of onion and wrap it up and pin it together with a toothpick.

You can fry them in a Lodge cast iron skillet, but they are six time’s better if you cook them on your smoker or grill. Have fun and happy eating.

Tom Claycomb lives in Idaho and has outdoors columns in newspapers in Alaska, Idaho, Utah, Nevada, Colorado and Louisiana.

I’ve written articles every year covering the Scooter’s Youth Hunting Camp that I help with. I’ve done seminars at all of the big outdoor stores and most of the big outdoor shows. And no doubt, I love that. But the funnest (spell check says funnest isn’t a word but what do they know about the different levels of fun?) event that I do all year is the SYHC, and we don’t get paid a penny for helping.

I think you get your most joy when you help others who can’t repay you. Sure, you have to hustle hard to make a living, but surely in the midst of all of that, you can help someone worse off once in a while can’t you? Anyway, SYHC is a high-speed camp, and it takes a lot of volunteer work to make it all gel. To show his appreciation to the volunteers, founder Scott McGann puts on a volunteer barbecue.

Sure, we have fun eating. It’s a potluck-type of meal and usually the main course is something like a Subway sandwich etc. This year, Scott had some guys grill some steaks that he bought from Owyhee Meats. The fellowship is fun and the volunteers can bring their kids.

Scott even has a small drawing for some gifts. It’s kinda cool. Some of the kids that have been to the camp before have decided that it’d be better if they didn’t try to get in again so another kid can go. So, the next year they volunteer to be a helper at the camp instead of a participant. A couple of the donor companies let him put a prize in the drawing so some of the volunteer kids got to get a gift. For instance, one kid won a Knives of Alaska Xtreme Series capping knife and so the drawing went.

But the big-time, over-the-top deal is the shooting afterward. As you can imagine, I like to shoot. I don’t do a ton of organized shooting, just mainly hunting. But, this is the best clay bird shooting set-up I have ever experienced.

Here’s the format. We set up four throwers in a line and eight shooters line up intermittently between them. They will start throwing birds as fast as they can. When your gun is empty, birds are still flying. You’re cramming shells in your shotgun and shooting as fast as you can.

In the beginning, if I remember correctly, we had five throwers and as many shooters as could cram on the line. That was really wild. Now we’re more organized. Well, sorta. Now each shooter will shoot about three gun loads and back up and let another shooter step up. By then your gun is smoking hot anyway.

You have to be wired to the max. Not only do you have to hit the bird but, you also have to get a shot off before the other seven shooters. Birds will be flying left, right, sideways and straight away. You never know what is going to pop out where. It is an amazing amount of fun.

So if you want to put on a fun family event, company event or shooting club event, you ought to try out a combat trap shooting deal. No one will be disappointed.

It may sound wild to you, but just put in a few simple (and normal) safety rules to ensure that no one goes home perforated. Behind the shooting line, all actions are open.

You can only load your shotgun while at the shooting line with the barrel pointed down range. We chalk a shooting line that anyone with a loaded gun has to stand at.

Have fun — and P.S. Bring plenty of shells!

Tom Claycomb lives in Idaho and has outdoors columns in newspapers in Alaska, Idaho, Utah, Nevada, Colorado and Louisiana.

Discussing the best big game rifle could cause a civil war. This is a topic more serious than politics. There’s be a better chance of seeing Hillary Clinton and President Donald Trump holding hands walking down Main Street drinking a latte than for an ardent 30-06 lover to set down and have a civil talk with a .270 fanatic.

Why is this such a touchy subject, the non-hunter may ask? I’ll tell you why: Not only are there arguments as to which is the best rifle manufacturer, but also as to what type of actions. Bolt-actions, lever-actions, pumps or semi-automatics. And for sure the most vehement arguments will be about the best caliber.

A lot of your choices will be strictly sentimental. Your dad or uncle used this rifle and you bought a rifle just like theirs and killed your first deer with it. It would almost be sacrilegious to change your beliefs.

So everyone will have their own rationale as to the best caliber. It may be for sentimental reasons as stated above. It may be because you saw John Wayne use such and such rifle or you may scientifically decide that this rifle has the fastest feet per second, knock-down power or whatever. And even among the scientific thinkers, they can err. Do you really think it matters if a bullet is zipping along at 2,800 feet per second as compared with brand X that only flies along at 2,700 feet per second?

And then a lot of it can be because of marketing. Here’s what I mean by that. How come the rifle that last year was advertised as the absolute best rifle ever designed is suddenly outdated? In one year! Because they have to advertise and breed contempt or you’ll buy one rifle and keep it for the rest of your life, pass it on to your kids and then it will be passed along to your grandkids. That’s not good for business.

I had to ditch my old Remington 742 I bought when I was 12 years old with my paper route earnings. Everyone knows bolt-actions are more accurate, so I bought a new Remington 700 .338 Win Mag — and missed the first bull I saw. Hold on — wait a minute. I thought they were the ultimate. I’d shot turkeys in the head at 60 yards with my old 742 and made dozens of head shots on deer with it. I’d been hoodwinked.

I say all of the above to show that people make up their minds as to which rifle/caliber is the best based on a lot of sub-standard reasoning and emotions. Or it may just be preferences. It’s like saying what is the best wife? Black haired? Blonde? Red haired? Pink, blue or orange haired? It’s a preference, not a right or wrong.

So with all of the above said, if you’re new to Idaho and trying to decide which rifle to buy, I’ll try to help you out. Forever, I used my old Remington 742 semi-automatic 30-06. It worked fine. For close shots, it was plenty accurate, but most people would agree that a bolt-action rifle is the most accurate and dependable. So I’d tell you to get a bolt-action rifle.

Years ago, to get a 1- to 1 ½-inch group, you had to get a custom rifle and reload. Now, there are a few factory rifles that are capable of getting 1 ½-inch groups with factory ammo. I’ve tested a couple of Mossbergs and been able to do this with them. So you don’t have to buy a super expensive custom-made rifle anymore to get good groups. (To tighten down your groups, you probably will need a trigger job.)

Now what about calibers? If you can only afford one rifle, I’d say get a 30-06. You can kill anything in America with it, but the .300 Winchester Magnum is better. They’ll be a little bit of an over kill on antelope and small deer, but still you’ll have a rifle that you can hunt everything in North America with. Then you have all of the other popular rounds, .308s, .270s, .243s, etc. Too many to list. Then, of course, right now everyone is in love with the 6.5 Creedmoor. But if you’re new to Idaho, I’d say get a 30-06 or more likely a .300 Winchester Magnum. I have a .338 Win. Mag. but wish I had of gotten a .300.

Almost as big of a factor as which caliber you choose is which ammo you use. I test a lot of ammo and am constantly amazed at how accuracy varies from ammo to ammo in my rifle. Just as important is how it performs when it hits an animal.

For years, I used the old Remington Core-Lokt ammo. As a kid, it only cost $10/box, so I couldn’t see paying $40 to $50 per box for the higher priced stuff. But it’d perform great on 10 to 15 deer in a row and then suddenly it wouldn’t. I remember one year I had to shoot a deer three times to drop it and an antelope twice all in the same year. That got me checking out better performing ammo.

Well, we are way out of room and have barely gotten started. Hopefully this short article will get you started. Or you maybe want to play it safe and just buy one of every caliber!

Tom Claycomb lives in Idaho and has outdoors columns in newspapers in Alaska, Idaho, Utah, Nevada, Colorado and Louisiana. He also writes for various outdoors magazines and teaches outdoors seminars at stores like Cabela’s, Sportsman’s Warehouse and Bass Pro Shop.

There was definitely a miracle on 34th Street or whatever street the Claycomb house is on the night before Christmas Eve. While digging through the freezer to find something or the other, I found one last package of salmon fillets. It was a fillet of silvers from two years ago while fishing with Alaska Expedition. The Claycomb girls were rejoicing — which brings up the topic of this week’s article: How to smoke salmon.

There are a lot of good ways to cook salmon but the two favorite methods in my house are blackened and smoked.

Blackening is not hard. Skin the salmon. I like to use a pair of needle-nose pliers and pull out all of the bones. Next, melt a little butter in a Lodge cast iron skillet. Drop the fillet in the butter and then flip. Pull it out and sprinkle on heavily some Paul Prudhomme’s Blackened Redfish spices. The butter will cause the spices to stick to the fillet.

Add a little butter to the skillet and turn up the heat. The Cajuns say to do this outside because you want the skillet smoking. I don’t cook it quite that hot, but you do want it to semi-burn a crust on the outside pretty fast. If the heat is too low, it will cook the fish throughout and be dry. You want to get a blackened crust on the outside, but the inside of the fillet should be almost rare or at least moist. Salmon is great blackened.

But the way that my girls like it best is smoked. So that’s what we’re going to focus on today. Here’s how I do it. Leave the skin on (I’ll explain why later). Pull the bones with a pair of needle-nose pliers.

Mix 3 to 4 cups of warm water with ¾ cup brown sugar, ¼ cup white sugar, salt, little pepper, ginger and stir. You can marinate your fillet in a cake pan or it works nice to put it in a plastic bag. Squeeze the air out of the bag so the marinade and bag are semi-tight against the fillet.

Marinating fish or jerky in a bag is nice because every hour you can massage it and not even get your hands dirty. On fish, I just flip it, which will help ensure that all surface areas are being marinated.

I like to let my salmon marinate at least four hours. In the old days, I’d smoke it on my smoker or grill on a piece of foil, skin side down. But that holds in the moisture so it tastes broiled instead of smoked. Here’s the best way. Smoke your salmon on a board, skin side down. The skin will stick to the board but no big deal because you aren’t going to eat the skin anyway.

The Native Americans will tell you to use a cedar plank but an oak cutting board or whatever will work fine. I soak my board in water before smoking to prevent it from burning, but most of my smoking boards are all charred on bottom.

For ease and consistency, I use a Camp Chef wood pellet grill. That way I can regulate the heat to a T, and it still has a good smoke flavor. I suppose any flavor of wood is good, but on fish I prefer apple.

Smoking on a wood plank lets the moisture run off so you get a dried fillet instead of a water-logged, broiled-tasting piece of fish.

Tom Claycomb lives in Idaho and has outdoors columns in newspapers in Alaska, Idaho, Utah, Nevada, Colorado and Louisiana. He also writes for various outdoors magazines and teaches outdoors seminars at stores like Cabela’s, Sportsman’s Warehouse and Bass Pro Shop.