Coeur d'Alene Fishing Report 08.09.18
Coeur d'Alene River
The Coeur d'Alene River is fishing well, even with the heat, folks. Just pick your times and try and avoid the midday heat. Early morning and late evening are your best options for consistently rising fish. Use a hopper followed with a beetle, ant, or a bead headed nymph to run deep. You’ll want to concentrate on the fast, or shaded water to find fish. The evenings will be awesome with caddis and pale evening duns hatching. Rusty spinners will be on the table as well. You should try running an x-caddis in a smaller size like a 16 with a dropper of a rusty spinner or a soft hackle. In the afternoon, swinging tandem soft hackles in the faster riffles will produce well too. Streamer fishing with smaller black wolly buggers, rabbit leeches, or near nuff sculpins will produce also. Nymphing is still good too, just downsize your nymphs a bit to match the bugs that are most prevalent like, pmd's, caddis, and rusty spinners. The sizes you’ll want to use will be in the 16-18# range now. And, be on the lookout for tricos too.
St. Joe River
The St. Joe River is fishing great right now. The St. Joe always shines this time of year compared to other rivers as it has more diverse water and more of a gradient drop. This gives us faster flowing water which means cooler water temps. With the deep canyon gorge on the upper sections, the water will have more shaded areas and deeper pools for the fish to seek refuge from the heat. The lower sections are still floatable from Marble Creek down past Calder. It is skinny but still very doable. Using the standard chubby in a smaller size like 10-12 with an ant, or a beetle dropper, or a long bead head will get the job done just fine. You’ll be seeing the same kind of hatches that the Coeur d'Alene is seeing; pmds, caddis, rusty spinners, tricos, hoppers, beetles, ants, and spruce moths. Speaking of spruce moths, they are out, and the trout are looking at them good. Using a larger elk hair caddis and skating or twitching them will get good results. The mornings are usually better. Moths tend to get a bit of morning dew on them and struggle to fly and then get stuck in the water. This is when they get chomped. The Joe will fish great this fall as we still have a good amount of water for this time of year compared to years past, so enjoy!
Clark Fork River (MT)
The Clark Fork River is fishing just okay. The upcoming high temperatures later this week will make things tougher though. I would focus on going in the evenings on the Clark Fork. The caddis hatches in the evenings are incredible. Running an elk hair caddis with a caddis pupae or a soft hackle is the way to go. Smaller pmd's and rusty spinners are out in the afternoons too. The mornings are decent, but the evenings are more consistent. Hoppers, chubby chernobyls with beetle or ant droppers will work great too. You will see some residual caddis from the night before, so don't be afraid to run some caddis early as well. The tricos will be out in full force in the next few weeks, so these will be out from early morning to midday, and the fish will be in the shade sipping these out of the foam lines. You’ll want to pick your floats now with the heat and it might be a good idea to do a couple of short floats during the day vs. a long all-day float.
Local lakes
Hayden, Chain Lakes, lower St. Joe River or CDA River, and Pend Oreille all are fishing great. Whether you want to huck a spinning rod or a fly rod, you will have good success. The smallmouth bass fishing on all the local lakes is fantastic right now too. Rocky shorelines with a sink tip and a white or black wolly bugger or Clouser minnow will do well. Popper fishing is fantastic also. Fishing weedless poppers in the lily pads will produce good largemouth bass. And, perch fishing is killer now too. It’s a great way to spend time with the kids. You’ll want to use a slip bobber rigged with small crappie or panfish jigs tipped with a maggot or a worm and concentrate in water about 10 to 12-feet with good weed growth. I have been getting decent reports in from the trolling guys that the kokanee fishing is decent. The lake fishing right now might be a good change of pace if you have been having a tough time on the rivers dodging floaters and picky trout. Finally, the smallmouth fishing on a fly rod is so fun, they fight great and are super eager to play.
See past reports from the CDA region here, or click here to view all northwest regional reports.