Idaho Falls, ID – After a 3-year hiatus, the 27th Annual East Idaho Fly Tying and Fly Fishing Expo will return to Idaho Falls, on March 24-25, 2023, at the new Mountain America Center campus in Idaho Falls. The event is organized and hosted by the Snake River Cutthroats, Idaho Falls Chapter for both Trout Unlimited and Fly Fishers International. The Expo is the Cutthroats sole fundraiser to support their mission of habitat conservation and education. The Expo will feature over a hundred fly tiers, including national award winners, demonstrating their tying techniques. A Video Fly Tying Theatre will highlight several notable tiers with a close-up view of their skills. Workshops will be offered on casting, tying, and fishing, including women’s and youth specific workshops. Destination and technique presentations will also be featured. New to the Expo this year is a casting pond, where casting gurus will be sharing their wisdom and where potential customers can try out new rods. Dozens of vendors will be present, representing many aspects of the fly tying and fly fishing community. A variety of raffles and silent auctions will also be available throughout the day to tempt visitors.
Evening activities inside the Blue Cross of Idaho Conference Center will include an exclusive screening of the Fly Fishing Film Tour (F3T), the original cinema exhibition of international fly fishing, on Friday. On Saturday the Expo will feature a lively banquet with raffles, silent auction, and live auction. Both events are ticketed and will charge admission.
Admission to the Expo is free to the public. The Expo will be open on Friday from 8:30AM to 6:30PM and on Saturday from 8:30AM to 5:00PM. To register for workshops or purchase tickets to the evening events you can visit Jimmy’s All Seasons Anglers at 275 A Street in Idaho Falls or by calling their store at (208) 524-7160. For more information about the Expo or the Snake River Cutthroats, please visit https://snakerivercutthroats.org/.
About Snake River Cutthroats:
The Snake River Cutthroats is the oldest Trout Unlimited chapter in Idaho, founded by Dr Jim McCue in 1972 as the Upper Snake River chapter. Today the chapter has over 370 members. The membership area stretches from Blackfoot in the south to the Montana border on the north, and from Mackay in the west to the Wyoming border on the east, excluding the Teton Valley. In addition to the funds raised as part of the Expo, the chapter members donate hundreds of hours each year working on local conservation projects, such as planting willows to stabilize banks and provide shade and cover for trout, constructing in-stream structures to create holding water or to scour out spawning gravel, and building fence to exclude livestock from sensitive riparian areas. They have worked on protecting critical trout habitat on the South Fork of the Snake River as well as many of its tributaries, the Blackfoot River. Projects in the basins of the North Fork of the Salmon and the Lemhi River have focused on helping endangered anadromous fish as well as resident fish populations. Conservation projects are typically done in cooperation with one of the state’s resource management agencies, including the Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management, and the Idaho Department of Fish and Game; other conservation organizations such as the Nature Conservancy; the Shoshone-Bannock Tribes; as well as private landowners.