Thomas Wolfe once wrote, “You can’t go home again”. Heck, it was the title of his 1940 posthumous classic novel. And he was telling a whole lot of truth with just those five words. After college and a brief stint in Spokane, my wife and I moved away from the inland northwest to the glorious Pacific northwest to a state called Oregon for eight wonderful years. Up in Bonners, my father died in 2020 and soon after my mother sold the old house and moved down to Coeur d’Alene. The man who bought the house did a nice HGTV-style refinish of the interior, painted the house a different color, removed the great Smoketree that defined the front yard, and reworked the beautiful garden behind the house in a way that would make my father roll in his grave. Another family is in there living their best life. The house that I grew up in no longer exists.

My wife Rachel, my son Olaf, and I moved back up to Bonners Ferry in 2023, and while it is the same place (for better or for worse), every time we would come back to visit over the years, it slowly was becoming something that it was not before. Oh, how I wish the Rex Theater was still playing movies; how I wish that there were more options for good food rather than numerous restaurants with nearly the same menus; how I wish that downtown was filled with more interesting shops rather than a million hairdressers.

It might sound like I am dishing a bit harshly on my old, and current, stomping grounds. But I do love this town, and some places really try hard to keep the spirit of the old town alive. I may be biased since I work there, but Bonners Books has continued to be unchanged. It still smells like it always has, the floors still talk to you, a black cat still follows you around, and the historical signs from bygone businesses still line the upper walls like a great museum. Speaking of that, the museum is still a wonderful place to visit and it is even better than it ever has been. Under the Sun is another business that knew what they were doing. Not only is it eclectic, unique, and serving up great food, I can walk in there and still see Don Lindsay’s hardware store in there, the ancient pieces of it being used in new and quirky ways.

But it is still not the same town that I grew up in.

Yet, what has mainly stayed the same as it was 30 years ago is nature. Our surroundings. Objectively the best part of this area; a wholly unique and beautiful part of the country at large. And the best part of that nature is in the waters.

Now, I am not going to sit here and defend our rivers in our county in relative terms of fly fishing. There are many, many better rivers a few hours away than what we have. I’ll take the Coeur d’Alene over the Kootenai, and I will take the St. Joe very much over the likes of the Moyie. However, our rivers have their charm. I have caught many nice trout out of both of them over the years; big, beautiful, tasty, and native.

The thing is though is that they are some of the most beautiful rivers around. When fly fishing is out of the equation, the Kootenai and the Moyie hold their own against all of the big and gorgeous rivers in our state and our country. However, when it comes down to fishing, the two things I think of that beat out a lot of the country waters I have wet my fly line on are the small streams and the high alpine lakes. We got our big creeks here, like Deep Creek and Smith Creek for example, that are more than fine creeks to fish. What I am talking about though are the small waters. High up in Myrtle Creek, Parker Creek with its steep and tight Canyon, Trout Creek with its effervescent waters rolling over its many large features. These are the creeks that are very technical/They’re taxing in that you must climb over rocks and through dense brush and remove numerous flies from numerous branches, and nearly not worth trying to fish for 99% of the average fishermen or fisherwomen. The amount of alluring small native cutthroat and rainbow that you can find in the runs, riffles and holes on these hard creeks provide some of the best and most satisfying fishing you can have on a fly rod.

All of these creeks originate from a home lake high in the Selkirks as well. And those lakes provide wonderful opportunities for a backpack trip complete with lakeside meals of freshly caught trout, lofty and extravagant backdrops of the Kootenai Valley or large mountain faces, and quiet evenings in a tent with only the sound of crickets and trout sipping mayflies in the lake next to you late into the night. The best part about these lakes is that they are all out of the way, all of them being attached to reasonable but longish hikes and you won’t be surrounded by a bunch of hootin’ and hollerin’ humans. People go out there to be quiet and expect everyone else to be quiet as well. Keep the serene, well, serene. And a lot of them aren’t up there to fish, so while you might have an audience for your casting, you won’t be crossing many lines or sharing the evening feed with anyone else.

This isn’t to say that the lower, more populated lakes aren’t worth fishing. But take Dawson as an example. It is not worth the cast there if you are on a dock rather than a boat. It is a very accessible lake close to town that has been overfished to hell, filled with loads of trash, and just not worth the effort in my opinion. But take another overfished lake, Perkins (a personal favorite of mine and my late fathers), and it is a whole different story. While hitting the far shores with a watercraft will put larger and better fish in the net, dock fishing is still an incredible experience depending on what you are out there to fish for. I was just out there last Friday for two hours fishing off the end of the dock into the lily pads that are still coming up. I was mainly targeting bluegill and other panfish with a 3wt rod, but brought along a 5wt Orvis Superfine graphite rod with a dry dropper rig if I felt like trying to focus on the bass that occasionally slapped further out in the pads. A 5wt is undergunned for bass in most regions, but not in most of our lakes.

After about twenty minutes and ten bluegill, a baitcaster came out on the long T-shaped dock and started on the other arm. We got to talking while casting, and in the next forty five minutes, I had thirteen bluegill, one black crappie, and three smaller largemouth bass under my belt while he had only brought in one small bluegill. Not tooting my own horn at all (maybe a bit), but it always feels good to outfish a spin rod or baitcaster on one of our lakes up here. After he left, I ended my day with six more smaller bass, and another twenty bluegill in the next hour. And while I brought nothing home in the end for the ol’ panfish fry up, I felt satisfied. Very satisfied. It is a simple pleasure to catch so many fish on a light enough rod for the necessity of having to play the bluegill a bit, and it always brings me back to my childhood with my father.

It is Home.

Thomas Wolfe also wrote, “If a man has a talent and cannot use it, he has failed. If he has a talent and uses only half of it, he has partly failed. If he has talent and learns somehow to use the whole of it, he has gloriously succeeded, and won a satisfaction and a triumph few men will ever know”. This talent, to me, could be the way you cast a fly line or tie a fly, how you write or draw or paint or play an instrument, or how you live the life you have been given. If you are too stuck on the changes around you and where you grew up or who you have become, you are missing all the great, unchanged (or changed in a positive way) things around you, and that will only lead you down the path of a terrible life full of regret. Just get out there and enjoy what you have.

Tight lines out there, friends.