CDA River Update

College hoops or Cutthroat in the net?

I drove up the NF Coeur d'Alene River yesterday before the Zags game to see what was happening since the bump in flows. Last Saturday was a bust for many with lots of debris in the water and clarity issues. Now I'm happy to report the river had cleared up and is looking prime.

My buddy Jesse and I drove up about 26 miles to see what the stretches above Prichard looked like, and as expected there was still a fair amount of snow and some ice ledges but a lot of areas had opened up since my last visit. Parking is a lot easier now too with many turnouts clear of snow.

We fished a couple spots above Prichard real quick and picked up fish in each location. While there was some midges hatching up there we didn't see any surface activity and caught our fish on euro and indicator rigs. The pats / worm combo is tough to beat this time of the year, but a beadhead copper john, prince, etc are also worth throwing on. I fished streamers very briefly but didn't pick up any. Last weekend reports were good with streamers on Sunday so it could have just been my lack of effort or time spent with them since we were on a time crunch.

After hitting the spots up higher we busted back down to the lower and tried a couple last spots before trying to make it back to watch the Sweet 16 game. We found a nice back eddy and I tossed a skwala around for a minute just for shits and giggles. One willing cutthroat came up to eat which I was stoked for the few mins I tried it. Since time was dwindling fast we just wrapped it up with some more fish on the nymphs and headed back.

To my surprise there were actually some small brown caddis hatching right before we headed out, I have never seen caddis this time of the year but Mother Nature does weird things. If you are really jonesin for a dry fly eat I feel you can search with a skwala and find some willing participants, it may not be many but after watching that one cutthroat come up for it I know there would be more.

Have a great weekend whether you are watching college basketball hoops or watching trout slide into your net!