Friday Fishing Scenes

St. Joe River fun

Mike and I snuck out of the office Thursday to see what's happening on the ol' St. Joe River as of late. I'm guilty of not fishing up here for a bit, so it was a nice change of pace from fishing the Spokane River and elsewhere. It's really tough to beat the beauty of the St. Joe and the quality of the fishery.

We got a later start than planned (pretty typical) but we were able to get to the Avery area before noon. Fishing right out of the gate with beetles was great and switched over to a pink hopper just to mix it up. Yup that worked too. Summer fly selections should consist of these flies.... terrestrials and attractors. You could throw in some caddis too but the terrestrials and attractors will "usually" get it done.

While we didn't have a need to switch we have had reports lately from the Idaho streams that small, like very small patterns have been working well. Small for our area is anything below size 14 in my opinion.

Weather was nice, but muggy, and an afternoon thunderstorm threatened to shut things down, but it never materialized luckily. River traffic I would say was on the lighter side, we maybe only saw 10-12 anglers in the stretches we fished above Avery. If you are willing to walk a bit between turnouts you will have a lot more water to yourself if the river gets busy. We skipped over a lot of water, just cherry picking some easy to access spots due to time constraints.

As the day warms up don't be afraid to add a long dropper to your foam patterns or just get straight down and dirty with a nymph, or euro rig. Haven't tried euro yet? Well lets just put it this way... the cutthroat don't stand a chance lol. Or in the case of my significant other Jen, she says... it's not even fair. Ha! Have a great weekend!