Coeur d'Alene Fishing Report 07.26.18
Coeur d'Alene River
The current flow is 433 cfs at Cataldo and dropping slowly. Well, summer is officially here folks. Hot weather and lower summer flows mean picking your battles properly. Early morning and later afternoon to evening are going to be your best bet now for good fish activity. Hoppers, beetles and ants and are all on the menu. Pmd's, caddis and rusty spinners will be your go-to mayflies for each day. Lots of flying ants are around and the fish are looking for them. My typical rig for this time of year will be a medium to smaller hopper with rubber legs and then a dropper of a beetle, or a flying ant. You’ll want to concentrate on the faster riffles and pocket water midday and the undercut banks and against big rock faces with deep water with the hoppers too. Twitching them is a good thing. Give them a bit of action and this will typically get them to look at your offering more. In the late afternoon and evenings, the caddis and pmd's take over. You’ll want to either use a smaller size 14-16 caddis with a soft hackle dropper or a pmd with an emerger dropper will also do the trick. If you guys are fishing midday, please be cautious with the fish and fight them quickly and release them quickly as the water temps are climbing and this makes it harder on the fish.
St. Joe River
The current flow is 730 cfs at Calder and dropping slowly. The Joe is fishing great right now, as it always does this time of year. Using a hopper with a beetle dropper or an orange or yellow Stimulator with a dropper, or bead head nymph will work great all day. I tell you though, the streamer fishing with smaller sculpin patterns right now is killer. I really like the Near-Nuff sculpin pattern. It's not too big and heavy to get you down quickly. Concentrate on the fast, oxygenated water and start at the top of a run and progressively work your way downstream, casting across and down with a fast, erratic strip will do wonders.
The evenings have been incredible with the caddis and pmd's. If you swing a set of soft hackles in a choppy riffle after the sun goes behind the hills, you will crush them. The mornings are good too. I would stick with the hopper and beetle dropper in the mornings and then later in the day switch to the streamer and small dry fly stuff.
Clark Fork River (MT)
The flow is 5,760 cfs and dropping slowly. Fishing is good, but again, I would try and fish early and late if possible. I would not worry too much about the midday action. We are supposed to be in the high 90's and possibly breaking the 100 mark this week in Western Montana, so this will make the midday fishing tough. If you can get on the water just before the sun comes up and fish until 10-11 a.m. and then get back on the water at 6:30-7:00 p.m. and fish until dark, this is the way to go. In the early mornings, you should see residual caddis from the night before and pmd's still out too. I would also start looking for tricos in the next few weeks as well. Morrish hoppers with a beetle or ant dropper will do the trick for searching from the drift boat, keep the bug close to the bank and in the foam lines. Large Crayfish patterns and San Juan worm droppers are great this time of year too. You can either run them dead drift like a nymph rig with an indicator or strip them quickly off the banks without an indicator.
Clearwater River
The flow is 16,200 cfs at Spalding and holding steady. There have been a decent number of our steelhead buddies coming over Lower Granite. By the first of August, it should be game on. If you are tired of catching awesome cutties on the trout streams, then maybe you should head south and do some summer swinging for some steelhead on the Clearwater instead. Traditional patterns like the purple peril, green butt skunk, hobo spey, small prom dresses, freight train, coal car, ska-opper and dry muddlers work. If we are lucky enough to get a cloudy day, go and take advantage of this as it can be some of the best conditions for this time of year. The water is very cold if you have not fished down there this time of year so, regardless of the hot temps you will still want to wader up.
Read past reports from the CDA region here, or click here to view all northwest regional reports.