Issue link: http://read.uberflip.com/i/316356
62 EAST IDAHO OUTDOORS MAGAZINE — 2014 I'm a manly mom. Somewhere along my chosen lane in life, I ducked behind a tree, shed my dress for waders and never looked back. I'm an outdoor journal- ist and the nature of working in nature lends itself to the manly side of life. I work with men. I fish with men and now I'm rais- ing men. My two sons have a mom who knows a lot more about fish than fashion. The result is a pair of little boys who know the value of clean rivers and the reason spawners are sorted in the spring. It's late afternoon when we arrive at the fish trap. The sun is hot on Pine Creek, one of the main tributaries on the South Fork of the Snake River near Swan Valley. My boys, clad in rubber boots, run in opposite direc- tions as soon as I drop the truck into park. The youngest is off to mark his territory on the biggest tree he can find. The oldest is already peeking over the rim of a big metal bucket. "When I grow up I want to be a wild scientist," he says. Brett High, Idaho Department of Fish and Game fisheries biologist, is bent over the bucket. My son's eyes bulge with excite- ment when he realizes the ruckus in the bucket is caused by a bunch of flipping fins. High dips his hand into the water, brings out a healthy cutthroat trout and lays it My Spawn Sorting the Spawn Working the fish trap with my kids on the measuring board. He is working to protect native cutthroat trout in the face of encroachment by rainbows. "It's always fun when you can handle a couple hundred fish in a day," High says. My son knows the cutthroat trout are the ones with orange slashes on their throat and he follows every one of them through the sorting process. He's as close to the work as he can get without getting soaked. He smells of fish scales and sunscreen as he reaches out to touch the calmest cuttie on the research table. "They flip around because they don't want to get out of the water," he says. My youngest is still more interested in perfecting his liquid aim over in the trees, but his lack of interest in the fish doesn't fool me. He picks flies out of my box like an expert. He usually grabs the biggest Chernobyl ant his baby hands can hold and it hooks fish every time. Maybe big brother will become the biologist who keeps track of the fish for his little brother to catch. I like that idea, but then my oldest says, "I don't know what my mom does, but that's what I want to do because she's outside a lot." The manly mom in me likes that idea even better. Brett High dips his hand into the water, brings out a healthy cutthroat trout and lays it on the measur- ing board. He is work- ing to protect native cutthroat trout in the face of encroachment by rainbows. KRIS MILLGATE PHOTO KEVIN CASS PHOTO { B A C K W O O D S — T H E S T O R Y B E H I N D T H E S T O R Y } BY KRIS MILLGATE/WWW.TIGHTLINEMEDIA.COM