November 16, 2025 Brent Auger

RECAP of 1st Ever IDAHO Tenkara Campout 2025

We had our 1st ever IDAHO Tenkara Campout in September 11th - 14th 2025 at the Baumgarter Campground group site on the South Fork Boise River in the Sawtooth National Forest. We kept this campout gathering very low key as we have never put on a gathering like this and just wanted to keep it simple for the first one. No training or presentations, just hanging out.

I believe we had 25-30 people show up for some part of the weekend gathering, we were terrible about counting heads and taking group photos so sorry about that.

The People

We had lots of attendees come from the Boise Idaho area but we also had a decent amount of people come from across the country. We had people from Idaho (of course), Utah, Montana, California, Wisconsin, North Carolina, Ohio, and even on attendee that drove his camper from as far away as Pennsylvania to attend! I love that fishing gatherings like this bring people from all over and all kinds of backgrounds together to become friends almost instantly.

I live in South East Idaho and never really fish the western side of Idaho so it was a lot of fun to come to the east side of Idaho and be with all these great tenkara anglers from the Boise Idaho area I have never met, except for a few that I have talked to at expos. There is definitely a descent sized group of tenkara anglers around the Boise area and I hope they will keep coming to future campouts to strengthen friendships that were made.

My favorite thing about this campout was just sitting around the campfire at night BS-ing all night with everyone. I think the last night we were up until 2pm having a good time, no one wanted to the night to end. It definitely reminded me of good times camping as a boy scout.

The Campsite & Area

The main group campground was very very very nice, it was basically our own loop of nice campgrounds with a center gathering area with a pavilion, 2 bathrooms, and fresh running drinking water. We also had an overflow camping spots on the other side of the road that we only had to use one site at, so there was definitely room to grow this gathering in the future. Their was also a nice hot spring to soak in at the end of the day, several attendees took advantage of this amenity over the weekend.

Many people brought their own camping & overlander rigs and it was cool to see the variety of the many different camping setups we had there from extreme to a simple hammock setup someone brought on there motorcycle.

This area is very beautiful and you are walking distance from the river and many people took a short stroll to the river right from our campground to catch lots of fish. There was miles and miles of fishing access to the South Fork Boise River to fish and many tributary creeks to explore with lots of fish to be caught there. It was easy to find places to fish all by your self or be with a small group of anglers.

The river had dropped significantly before the campout so wading it was much easier than normal flows. The Kokanee were also running up the river so it was awesome to watch them, although they did seem to push the other trout out of the main holes so it did add a level of difficulty to find the fish and the Kokanee were not very interested.

The campground was deep in the mountains 45 minutes from cell service and far away from restaurants and modern life. It was great to get away from it all. We did bring satellite internet and turned it on in the evening for a bit for those who needed it and for those who had an emergency situation that required calling/texting someone (which we did need a few times).

The nice thing about being in the middle of no where away from civilization is the night sky was totally lit with stars. There is something that renews your soul when you can look up and see so many stars with such clarity.

The Fishing

We did have a few people who caught kokanee, and bull trout during the campout event. There were also plenty of rainbow trout and good sized white fish to be caught. Many people caught species of fish for their first time here.

I mostly stuck to the main river fishing fished it for a few miles and went up a little bit in the Big Smoky Creek on Saturday to fish. I found the most success in the chaotic currents around the faster moving currents around lots of big rocks, where the Kokanee didn't like to be. There were lots of tributary creeks that I did not explore this time but many others did and caught lots of fish. All in all, everyone caught fish and had a great time.

Will this be an Annual Idaho Event?

This location was an excellent place for us to have a tenkara gathering and we plan to have this event here again regularly in the future. We plan to have switch back and forth every other year from Western Idaho to Eastern Idaho/Wyoming area to switch things up a bit.

Next year we will be hosting the campout on the Idaho/Wyoming boarder near Alpine Wyoming, the camp site is not as nice but there are plenty of places to fish and beautiful canyons to hike. More details on this campout will come out in our newsletter and blog as we get things lined up but save the date August 27th-30th 2026 so you can attend with us.

Why Do We Do These Events?

While there was no training or presentations at this campout, building friendships within the tenkara community is the main reason we organize these campouts. We can talk and interact all we want online but it does not even compare to meeting in person and fishing together.

It is amazing that a group of people of different age groups, widely different beliefs and political stances, many different professions, very different personalities and experiences, and from all over the country can come together to at a tenkara gathering and have a great time together. This is probably my favorite thing about sharing a passionate hobby such as tenkara fishing with others, it brings people all walks of life together and it is sometimes like you are instantly friends when you come to a gathering like this.

THANK YOU everyone who came and made this a great time, I hope you all had as much fun as I did hanging out with you all. --Brent Auger

Here are some Videos I Took While Fishing at the Campout: