Hours:

Monday-Friday: 9:30-5:30

Saturday: 10:00-5:00

Sunday: Closed

A bit over an hour too early; an hour too long to stick around. I had a river waiting for me, and I had luckily tied a couple of Adams, Caddis, and ants during my free time the previous week. I should be set, I thought. And I continued on.

I made my way over the I-90 and went east towards the Montana border before cutting down onto Highway 3, a wonderfully windy road that meandered its way past Rose Lake, Killarney Lake, and the lower ends of the Coeur d’Alene and St Joe Rivers. By 10 a.m., I was rolling my way into St Maries, Idaho for the first time in years. The last time I had been in this neck of the woods was a fishing trip within the year after my last class at University of Idaho with an old friend of mine, Bradley Pakish. While I remember it not being the most fruitful day of fishing I’ve had in my life, I remember how the river felt. I remember the cold, clear water we stood in, watching the first rise to the hatches, hatches so diverse on a river that a spot you just fished on one long bend would have the cutthroat sipping midges out of the air and when that hole was fished out and you made your way back to the car to drive a half mile up or down towards a large caddis hatch happening when your feet hit the water again. The fishing was constantly evolving, fishing that kept a fisherman on his toes, and I was excited to get back to such an environment on this trip down.

I pulled off the road in downtown St Maries and walked into Blue Goose. I browsed the wares for a bit, looked at the somewhat measly fly collection they had with a furrowed brow, grabbed a pair of cheap-o polarized sunglasses and made my way to the front counter to hand the man the merchandise–a man who didn’t notice me or chose to ignore me while he finished reading an article in his copy of the Gazette. That is until I cleared my throat a bit, and he hobbled over and took my fiver dollar bill and scraps of change, handed me a receipt and went back to reading. A definitive codger, one who would talk about how the town and the river declined from yesteryear, and I would have rolled my eyes. That is until I hit the river myself.

At this point I shot Andrew a message, and he replied immediately. I knew that he had some work meetings during the day, and he let me know that I could hang out at his house until he was done. Well, I was out of the house, out of the town, out of the county, and I have a three-year-old that I dearly loved, and missed, that has ears that are currently only for decoration and I really needed to get out to something that listened to me. Like the St Joe River. It was still early, and I needed to get a line or two tight. I went north out of town and turned off onto St Joe River Road. This road was a nostalgia trip for me. Winding, awe-inspiring views as far as I could see…once I got past the rows and rows of RVs, lifted flag-decorated trucks, and 40 year old men who looked as if they were 60. When I got up past Calder, it turned into Heaven, paradise, Jannah, Devas. A snaking stone river of riffles and flats and slurping cutthroats. Tall stands of white pine, ponderosa, cedar, firs. Seemingly endless vehicles that are there to float and not fish. But the floaters, that is something that will be brought up later. They get me thinking about the world in which we all live; a constant ebb and flow of changes such as the river I follow upwards through the hills. But as the world changes and gets uglier and meaner and more vicious (see: current United States meta for how we interact with each other), the river changes towards beauty. It remains the same in our eyes but the water that rolls past your ankles is somewhere far, far down the river within a minute. It makes one question the minutiae of everyday life away from the river, how we humans conduct ourselves whether face to face or through a phone screen. And it makes one wonder why we have lost our way as rivers ourselves. People change; they always do. I don’t like to admit it, but I am far different now at 35 than I was at 15, 23. Heck, even 34. I hope that I still have some of the same hint of humanity that projects from me that I did back then: youthfulness, eagerness to learn, a love for people to be shared with them in a chair or two under a tree and a bright, high sun. However, I can’t guarantee it. The philosophy that comes from fly fishing and considering one’s place in nature is ultimately unfounded nonsense to which the fisherman will soon realize that it is just, as the late John Gierach would put it, standing in a river and waving a stick.

The St Joe River, head to toe, is what one would call a great cutthroat river. What makes a great cutthroat river? Cutthroat, of course. There are plenty of them swimming around the winding cool waters of the North Idaho gem. And I was here to fish, not philosophize–at least not for the whole time.

Rolling my car through the twists and turns of the road, there were plenty of fishable but well-occupied lower river spots being fished. I find an old pullout I have used in the past without a car in sight. As I park, I remember why I originally found it unused years ago. The river flowed below me nearly 65 feet, and my traverse would be a nigh-cliff face with a few white pine roots that could be used as stairs, or some sort of lowering mechanism that my wife would use as evidence of why she should kill me if she saw me stumbling down it. But the water was beautiful there: a large bend upriver into nice riffles and a few deep pools that were definitely holding some fish. As I tumble-slid down the hill, making sure to keep my rod above the rest of me and hoping if anything breaks this early into the weekend that it is not my pretty little ancient 9 for 6 Orvis, I hit the bottom with only one scrape on my rear end.

Then comes the first cast. An important cast. Not only to establish how competent you will be with your fishing skill for the day, but to also have the possibility of that rare occurrence where the first cast, perfect or not, leads to an immediate eat by the first trout. Slightly tensed, overly excited, I pulled out the line in order to perform that perfect cast that I saw in my head. I wanted to hit the end of the bend and follow these riffles down to the first pool near the bank. I just knew something had to be in there. I had a gut feeling, a feeling that any fisherman, beginner to professional, has when they see such water. That, and I had seen a pretty nice trout come up from there to slurp a mayfly in the hatch currently going on. A couple dozen yards pulled and I shot the line up. Perfectly placed, and right where I wanted it to be. The fly, a size 20 Adams I had tied only a few days prior, lands precisely on top of the moving waters and the presentation is al bacio. And the next dozen or so after that felt pretty good too. Alas, no takes.

When a fly fisher is on the verge of a skunk, there are many things that they will do. Some might start aggressively casting to the riffle, hoping the slap of the fly on the end of their tippet will piss off a fish enough that they will take it out of annoyance. Another fisherman might start changing out flies every three casts because who knows what the fish might be rising to at this point. Some might be in denial, i.e. “no, it’s the fish that are wrong”. For me, I tend to throw on a basic pheasant tail nymph and plop it into some deep pool and start jigging from above. It’s a habit I have had since I was younger and my father was catching a heck of a lot more fish than me: jig for the bluegills. Some people might see this as too close to the edge of not fly fishing. Some people might see it as fly dapping, but with a nymph rather than a dry fly. Honestly, it really feels like a small step above putting a worm on a hook and just sitting there like a kid in some ‘60s John Wayne movie. For me, it’s nearly a guaranteed catch. If it’s not a trout, some pikeminnow, white fish, “trash fish” will take hold of the fly and I will be able to hold my head high and tell myself that I caught a fish today.

And I did. First came a 12-inch pikeminnow that was actually quite beautiful–for a pikeminnow, that is. That was before it coughed up half a crawdad onto my lap.

After letting the fish off the hook and back into the water,

the next two jigs provided me with my first St Joe Westslope cutty

in a long time. It was small, about 8 inches and it had a wound on its tail

that looked as if someone had snagged it with a hook at some point,

but it was native, it was handsome, it was what I had come down to catch.

Though, I still wanted a fish that would make my line run a bit. After releasing the fish, I received a message from Andrew telling me that he was nearly done. I climbed back up the cliff side with a good bit of effort, got into my Subaru, and stopped by the Calder Store bar for a can of Rainier before I went to meet with my childhood buddy for a wonderful weekend of fishing.

“I swear it was a nice one.”

Please forgive the author for his fish holding ability for the day.

My reunion with one of my oldest, and dearest, friends began as one should: a few blue cans, a juicy tri-tip that had been in a smoker all day, and a bit of small talk. Then, as the reminiscing begins, you move to a bottle of Bonded Old Grand-dad that never stood a chance when paired with a fine cigar around a campfire. Within an hour and a half, the bottle was gone. And I thought we would be too. Instead, we just continued (although in a relatively different state of mind) to talk about the old days, the old crew, our families, and we dreamed up the potential of tomorrow’s St Joe Fishing Extravaganza.

Early the next morning, I rose from the couch with only a slight crick in my neck. I felt good, which was odd when you saw the collection of aluminum and intact glass that was covering the table. Andrew and I met in the hallway where we discussed how odd it was that we were upright rather than curled up in the fetal position on the floor. After a quick cup or three of coffee, we were out the door, in his truck, and driving upriver.

The morning was warm and soon to be hot, and the day was still other than the sloshing of my only slightly nauseated, but expertly contained guts. White pines and doug firs flew by as we crossed the threshold of the RVs, campers, and the fishers who weren’t going as deep into the valley as we planned for the day. The bright blue skies were cloudless, the temperature balmy but fair. Though forest fires were ripping through the lower panhandle of northern Idaho, there was not a hint of smoke in the air.

We pulled into the parking lot at Marble Creek, a ripping tributary into the St Joe (and a fantastic place to start) and we got out and lined our rods. A bubbly lady, who I believe worked for the national forest up there, asked us if we were heading off to fish. We looked at the gear in our hands and said yes. She told us good luck and that she had heard a lot of shouting, hooting, and hollering down that way about an hour ago. That is something one does not want to hear before they head out to the water. To me, it’s like going to buy a powerball when you are feeling pretty damn lucky, and the cashier at the counter says, “Oh, good luck. The person ahead of you just won the whole thing”.

We shrugged it off, and said thank you for the good luck. I got my wading boots on, and we crossed the creek and went out into the Joe for the first time that day. The water was perfect. It’s shallow here nearly the whole way across, but the far side of the river has a deeper, faster run–an easy route for a fish to come and bop your dry fly. I started out lower and Andrew took the higher water. Our lines touched water for the first time of the day, and it was on. We hadn’t agreed on a competition, but we have always been a smidge competitive in the past. Our dead drifts were being interrupted every minute by drunken floaters on rafts or paddle boards or inflatable air mattresses, so, it was about time we moved up the river past the watercraft launch.

After a pizza and a bit of the ol’ hair of the dog at TFP’s in Avery and a quick stop at the Idaho Fly Fishing Company across the street, we were off upriver again. The first spot we saw had a fisherman in the water. The second spot we saw had fishermen. The next few, fishermen. You never want to encroach on a spot where other fishermen already are. While there is plenty of river up or down from them, it is still a bit of old-fashioned etiquette (and risk-aversion of any dumb confrontation that it might cause) to let the person have their spot as they were there first.

A few miles upriver, there was a truck-sized pullout  and a steep climb down to the water. We could see the fish rising to something in the shallow water, and they were rising often. Any way we looked was a glimpse into perfection–the only disturbance in the water was caused by hungry trout.

And there was a lot of disturbance.

Andrew went off to a bend downriver that was redolent of the run at Marble Creek, and I went up into the shadows where the fish were feeding near the middle of the river in the shallows. I still hadn’t seen what they were eating but with as many noses that were breaking the surface, it had to be a hatch. I crept my way up the far bank, laying low and keeping my eyes open. Then I saw one land on my arm–midges. Very small midges, probably a size 22 or smaller. I considered yelling out to Andrew downstream, but there was no way he would have heard me. It looked like he was already onto something. I kept my eye on him and his fight as I tied on the closest fly I had to match the hatch, a size 20 Griffith’s Gnat. As I made my way out towards the fish, the feeding frenzy intensified. Soon, a symphony of trout feeding accompanied the way the wind blew through the pines, the way the water rolled over the river stones, the light percussion of my boots going slowly in and out of the channel– and I, the conductor, tried to find the drift I needed to rouse the audience.

I never found it. The fish were king for the day. The fish sipped midge bodies all around me and my gnat. They chose correctly over the course of a hundred or so casts, and five different fly patterns. Suddenly, the hatch subsided. The feed stopped. The river kept moving.

I made my way down to Andrew to see how he had done, and he showed me the picture of the single trout he caught the whole time. It was a healthy looking 8-inch cutthroat fully loaded with dark black spots, and an extra bright orange slash on the lower jaw. A small trout, but a gorgeous trout. It was one more than I had for the day. We made our way back to the truck and moved to another spot, one from earlier that we had seen and were hoping was free of other sportsmen.

It was, and the fish were jumping. They just didn’t jump for us. We fished well that day, but no matter how perfect you are in the way you present the fly, the fish has the last say in whether or not they want to accept your offering. We took a dip in the water to wash off the summer sweat that had caked our bodies, and we sat on the shore to watch the fish feed. After a moment of quiet reflection on the day, Andrew broke the silence by saying:

“It’s pretty annoying when the fish are feeding like this, and you can’t even catch one of them.”

I nodded, but sometimes that’s the rub. Some days you don’t get what you want, but I realized that I did. I didn’t catch my big cutthroat trout,or any fish for that matter, but it was the first day outdoors with an old friend of mine that we had had together for over a decade. Between this time and the last, a lot had happened. There were falling outs. There were weddings. There were the births of each of our children. Life happened. What we had together this weekend was just another chapter in our lives up to this point, and it was a beautiful one I will remember for the rest of my life.

We dried off, went back to town, had a much more mild night and said our goodbyes in the morning. I had a birthday for a kid I didn’t know at my wife’s aunt and uncle's place on the Pend Orielle River where my in-laws, my wife and my child would be. I did have some time when I got back onto I-90, and I made my way over to the North Fork of the Coeur d’Alene River outside Cataldo for one last chance at my fish. I pulled off the road beneath the Cataldo Mennonite Church and made my way to the water. There was no action on the water other than the soft, slow drift of some foam in the deep water. I had my 3 weight fiberglass rod set up with a tried-and-true, terribly tied (by me) elk hair caddis that had previously been in over two dozen trout mouths and was still, somehow, all together.

I watched for movement, for rises. I watched everything. After ten minutes, I thought there was no trout in the river. I cast out anyway. On the second drift, a fish came up and took the fly. I set the hook, and the fish was on. And it was big. I played it smart and let the fish run. It started running upstream and I gave the line a bit of pressure to try and get the fish to run back at me. It did, and I began stripping my line in. I raised the rod and it bent to the cork.

It was big. I played it up and down the river. This was what I wanted the whole trip and I was so close. Don’t lose it–patience, I thought over and over again until it was in my net. It was a 15-inch, well-fed Westslope cutthroat trout. Elated, I snapped a picture and let it go. I tossed my gear into the back of my car, and off I went towards Laclede.

I arrived a bit after noon, hugged my wife and child as they met me where I parked, and we made our way towards the giant summer home. After a weekend on the river, it was quite the shock to be back in crowds of people so soon. The place was full of rowdy people, and not in the fun sense. These were obnoxious people, focused on their wine coolers and who had the newest gossip to share about people I would never know. Not so much wine coolers, as that is a bit dated. It’s the Topo Chico hard seltzer type of crowd; luxurious, scrawny fit women and schlubby men. I say this with love as I bet they are fine people. It’s just that I didn’t want to be around people at all. I wanted to be alone, deep in the flowing waters. I still smelled of the Sleepy St Joe. I was looking out at all the watercraft in the Pend Orielle when one of the women, a tall blonde with chiseled abdominal and her hair pulled tight above her Coach sunglasses, taps me on the shoulder and says, “hey, I have a question for you”.

“Sure, what can I help you with?” I ask back.

“You see that lady down there, the one with black hair and black sweatshirt?”

I could see her down on the dock, kid in tow and talking with a distinguished older gentleman. 

“Yeah? What about her?”

She grimaced down towards the dock and snarled, “Do you know who that lady is?”

I looked again, and answered her with a “I don’t even know who you are”. She attempted a thank you as she left with a huff to ask the next person, and I went back to day dreaming of the Joe and wondering why I ever decided to leave the water.

I had some gloating to do, so I went over to the table where my in-laws and a whole load of my wife’s other siblings were sitting. Her father asked how the fishing went. I told him the truth, that it wasn’t as productive as I was hoping, but then I pulled out my phone to show him my one win of the weekend. I pulled up the photo on my phone, and it was a blurry mess. I turned my phone around to look at the camera and could see the water sloshing around under the lens. I seemed to have waded a bit too deep that weekend.

“I swear it was a nice one.”

Published by https://9b.news/on March 28th, 2025 and April 4th, 2025.