St. Joe River, ID

I headed over to Spokane this past weekend to visit my parents, and we (Mom, Dad, Jana, and I) headed over to the Joe for a day to see if we could get into some Cutts. We hit it on Monday (8/28) in hopes of avoiding crowds. We got on the river around 11am and proceeded to one of my favorite runs up past Avery, but was already claimed by another dude. I decided to try a new section near one of the campgrounds, and it turned out to have a sweet run that you couldn't see from the road. The fish were rising, but seemed a bit picky. After dialing in on a small BWO pattern, everyone started getting strikes. Everyone landed a few Cutts in an hours time on the dry, ranging between 8-14", with many fish hooked but not landed. My dad, who had fly-fished once a LONG time ago, landed his first fish on a fly (12"), but it wouldn't be his last of the day. In the deeper part of the run, I setup a double-nymph rig with a big, heavy BH Hare's Ear on top (to get down the water column fast) and a size 16 BH Pheasant Tail about a foot below that. The fish absolutely crushed the Pheasant Tail, and we had a handful of takes on the Hare's Ear. Within about 5 casts through the run, I hooked and lost 2 big guys and landed a plump 14". Everyone else nymphed through the run and landed a couple fish, both cutts and a few whitefish. My dad took the biggest fish off the nymph, a plump 15". Between everyone, we probably caught and released about 15 fish from that run, with everyone catching at least 3 in about 3 hours time. Oh, and we saw a massive cutt hit the orange strike indicator as my Mom was nymphing throught the hole -- I had to be in the 20" class, easy. It came up like a submarine and flopped over like a breaching whale. I attempted to throw an orange, rubber-legged stimi and nyphed through his pocket to no avail. We broke for a 45 minute lunch and decided to hit another couple holes while we made our way back down towards Avery. The next spot was a classic bend with a shallow riffle leading into a very big, deep pool. My Dad caught 2 on the dry towards the tail of the pool in about 30 minutes, Jana hooked into a nice one on a nymph and lost it. I caught a couple off a dry in a shady riffle above the pool. After about an hour at that spot, we stopped at one last place -- had a couple hits, but nothing to hand. We called it about 6:30 pm, and headed back into Avery to get some good pizza at the one joint some of you have been on previous trips. All and all, a damn good day. I played quite a bit of guide, but it was fun getting everyone into fish. I probably ended up landing about a dozen fish by the end of the day, the largest being 14" and the average being about 12". Once again, the St. Joe produced! 'Till next time, Josh