Fly Fishing in Idaho

My mind has been on fishing today, probably because I've been working in the pond again... It's been about 15 years since we wandered our way across the St Joe River in the far reaches of Idaho (Avery) to fly fish in the Bitteroot Mountains. I'm sure it's much as it was then; not much traffic, really rustic hotel rooms, lots of logging roads to get lost on.

We were still "new" to the whole pregnancy thing when we made this trip. It was late summer/early fall, there were still berries on bushes, and the St Joe was running well and loaded with trout. We found a good spot to fish and I tied on my favorite ant fly, I should say my "lucky" fly. I perched on a nice big boulder and casted for awhile, nothing was biting. After an hour of different spots for me and different flies for my husband, we decided to take a hike. We found a nice trail that led up to a ridge overlooking the river. Before we knew what happened we'd covered a good bit of territory and somehow lost the trail. We headed towards the river.

We walked downhill through a lot of brush and a lot more berry bushes; me ever wary of bears. The Bitteroots still have their share of Grizzlies... I did what I was always told to do: make noise as you hike. It wasn't hard; I was pregnant, tired, lost, worried and hungry. And I had to pee. Badly. I was wearing clothes topped with waders and boots. The effort to get out of the clothes took way longer than my husband thought it should, but I couldn't hurry for fear of "losing it" too early in the process. And the spot had to be just right too and, of course, when your belly is big your balance isn't quite the same, but you get the picture.

Then we had to worry about losing light, it was late in the day. We found a trail, but couldn't be certain it would lead back to our spot on the river. SO we opted to hike IN the river. For those of you who haven't hiked in wading boots and waders... there is a lot of drag involved, and we were dragging ourselves UPstream too. And the bottom was slippery. And I was still hungry. After what seemed like a long time we came to a fork in the river; not good. But we found a fisherman and he pointed us in the right direction. And since we still hadn't encountered any grizzly bears my patience returned. We found the car.

We had dinner in Avery and then decided to head east for "shelter". Somehow we ended up on a logging road that grew more trail looking as we drove, eventually leading us in Montana and dropping us off in St. Regis. There we found a hotel room, which was more "shed" than Sheraton, but it had a bed and a bathroom.

Janice Arrowood
Fly Fishing in Idaho © 2009