St. Joe River

The St. Joe is the river people point to when they want to prove westslope cutthroat fishing can still be great in the Lower 48, and it earned that the hard way. By the early 1970s the Joe had been logged, splash-dammed, and fished down to almost nothing; Idaho Fish and Game answered with catch-and-release and gear restrictions above Prospector Creek, and fifty years later the upper river holds thick numbers of wild cutthroat that will eat a size 12 attractor off the surface all day. Fish average 12 to 16 inches with honest shots at 18-plus in the deeper corner pools — not a trophy river pretending to be one, just a genuine wild-trout river where the fish look up.

It fishes in two personalities. Above Avery it's a walk-and-wade freestone of pocket water, riffle corners, and boulder pools along the St. Joe River Road, small enough near Spruce Tree that a 4-weight and a box of Chubbies and Purple Hazes is the whole kit. The postcard run is the roughly 15 miles between Spruce Tree Campground and Gold Creek; drive past Red Ives Ranger Station to the end of the road and the river goes roadless for 26 more miles of hike-in wilderness water where, after Labor Day, you may not see another soul. Below Avery the river opens up, warms, and turns floatable — drift boats and rafts run down toward St. Joe City and St. Maries, where cutthroat share the water with rainbows, brookies, whitefish, and, in the slow lowest reaches near Coeur d'Alene Lake, smallmouth, pike, and perch.

Timing is the honest catch. The Joe is pure snowmelt off the Bitterroot divide, so it runs high and off-color through spring runoff and doesn't come into shape until mid-June; the season is roughly early June through mid-October, and the salmonfly and golden-stone weeks in late May and June are the marquee event when they line up with dropping water. Bull trout are present and fully protected — no targeting, release any you hook. Access is easy where the road follows the river and genuinely remote where it doesn't; the nearest fly shops and licenses are in Avery, St. Maries, Coeur d'Alene, and Moscow.