Recorded while floating down the Selway River in the heart of the Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness, we invite you to join us for an interview with Mark Martin. Mark is a river and fishing guide in Idaho who serves as a salmon and steelhead advocate for the Idaho Outfitters and Guides Association. Mark is also a writer, conservationist and backcountry skier. Mark is also a fly tier extraordinaire who is known as the "Idaho Guide Bob Ross".

Mark was born and raised in northern Maine: a place and culture where “going for a walk in the woods” is still a legitimate way to fill an empty afternoon. He spent most of his free time fishing, hunting, canoeing, and skiing, and his dad taught him to flyfish and tie flies when he was eleven. Several years of education and work in fisheries conservation led him to a realization that no wild river’s heart and soul could ever be characterized by a series of equations….and right about then he discovered central Idaho and the Middle Fork. It was, as they say, love at first sight. Since then, his natural habitat has become the rower’s seat of a fishing boat.Mark ties all his own flies for fishing, sells a few, and brings a selection of favorites to the Middle Fork for each trip. When not guiding, he finds work as a server at an off-the-grid backcountry ski-in restaurant in the winter in McCall. Somewhere in there he finds the time to fly fish obsessively for steelhead all over the Northwest, and explore Idaho’s mountains on his skis…all while daydreaming about last Middle Fork season, and the next. He is also a favorite amongst our guests and is an incredible fishing guide and has the patience of a sage.

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