Secluded streams swollen with salmon. Remote rivers full of trout. Even alpine lakes with all sorts of gilled critters. In some cases, these areas are impossible to reach by car and grueling to get to on foot.

Enter heli-fishing, an increasingly popular adventure sport that airlifts anglers from luxurious backcountry lodges to some of the best fishing spots on earth. (See the slideshow.)

“Helicopters enable us to reach smaller rivers rarely seen by other anglers,” says Mark Miller, owner of Talaheim Lodge, a heli-fishing resort on the Talachulitna River, 85 air miles west of Anchorage. “Because the copters can land virtually anywhere, we need to travel just minutes from the lodge to find great remote fishing [areas].”

This concept isn’t exactly new. Heli-fishing began in New Zealand in the 1980s, at lodges located in the middle of nowhere. Helicopters were a necessity—without them, some fishing spots were literally unreachable without considerable effort.

In the 1990s, many new upscale hunting and fishing lodges in North America began to offer heli-fishing. Because most fishable waterways in the contiguous United States are accessible by road, many of these lodges were built on undeveloped tracts of “vertical real estate” in British Columbia and Alaska.

Nimmo Bay Resort is a 27-year-old lodge with nine chalets near the lush and foggy foot of Mount Stevens outside Port McNeill, British Columbia. The lodge runs heli-fishing trips from mid April to early October, and owner Craig Murray uses a Eurocopter A-Star to chopper guests and their gear to streams on more than 30,000 square miles of coastal wilderness. Their bountiful catch: mostly salmon and trout.

“Anglers can either fly-fish, spin fish, or spey cast with a doublehanded fly rod,” Murray says. “Introducing them to the ‘fantastic’ keeps them coming to our doorstep—and returning.”

One high-profile fan of Nimmo Bay: actor William Shatner, whose television show, Boston Legal, filmed an episode there in 2005. Gray Hawn, a photographer from Austin, Texas, is another repeat customer. Hawn has visited the lodge three times, and says that on the last trip, she reeled in her biggest catch ever: a 20-pound coho salmon.

“On every trip we caught many fish, but the last [one] exceeded them all,” says Hawn, who posed for a photo with the fish before letting it go. Almost immediately after celebrating her catch, she ducked into the woods and found herself face-to-face with a grizzly bear.

“It was one heck of a day,” she says.

For years, angling enthusiasts have wondered whether the heights achievable through heli-fishing make the fishing so good. Chris Santella, author of Fifty Favorite Fly-Fishing Tales: Expert Fly Anglers Share Stories from the Sea and Stream (Stewart, Tabori & Chang, 2006), suggests that fish in remote streams aren’t as skeptical of lures and other traditional methods of capture.

“It’s not necessarily higher altitudes, but more secluded spots, that enhance the fishing experience,” he said. “When the fish see fewer flies, they’re a little less wary and a little easier to catch.”

Whatever the reason, the rewards of heli-fishing don’t come cheap. Many lodges aren’t even accessible without a helicopter, and they are using the whirlybirds all day long. Most heli-fishing adventures range from $500 to $2,000 a day. In most cases, this price includes accommodations and all meals.

Not surprisingly, these meals are exquisite, and they usually incorporate someone’s catch of the day. Many lodges fly in gourmet chefs to prepare meals; at the Poronui (pronounced poor-new-ee) Ranch near Taupo, New Zealand, chef and lodge manager Eve Reilly cooks up a weekly barbecue with game from the property—“typical of New Zealand’s low-key, no-fuss approach” to regional cuisine, she says.

Bob Lende, 66, a retired railroad worker from San Antonio, is a devotee. He and his wife have visited the lodge six times in the last 12 years, including weeklong stays during the past three Christmases. He fishes; she hikes.

“It’s just amazing how the helicopters can take you virtually anywhere in a matter of minutes,” he says. “If we wanted to hike to some of those spots, it’d take days. This way, we fly in, fish a bit, and get back to the lodge in time for a cocktail and dinner.”