Coeur d'Alene River Fishing Report 5-22-17

The time has come and boy has it been a long time coming. Blue skies, warm breezes, cold water and hatches that fill the sky with tasty little trout treats.

We were planning on taking my friend's new drift boat out to some local lakes in search of bass, and to make sure it held water, but the river was constantly on my mind. With our first 80 degree day of the year on the horizon, I knew the odds of finding me out bass fishing out of a drift boat were slim...

Once we realized just how nice of a day it was going to be, it didn't take much convincing that the river was the way to go. Sure bass fishing would have probably been more productive, but drifting a gorgeous flowing river was what my soul needed. So we loaded up the cooler with all the drinks and snacks we could fit, hooked up the boat and hit the highway.

Looking to purchase a cooler? Look no further.

The moment that emerald green water came into view I knew we had made the right choice.

We dropped my rig at the junkyard takeout and cruised on up the the steamboat launch and threw the boat in the water. It appeared to be holding water so we pushed off and never looked back.

Although with flows as fast as they were, looking back wouldn't have done us any good anyways. The hatch was incredible all day with tons of March Browns, Mayflies and Grey Drakes flying around, but the bite was slow. I tried stripping a Sculpzilla for a bit to try and pull a big fish off bottom, but had no success, not even a follow.

We've got a range of dry flies online for sale right here.

I quickly put that away and got to what I came to do: throw big dry flies to rising trout. For the prolific number of bugs on the water, there were relatively few rises throughout the day. I feel like most of the bigger fish are still higher up in the system.

The boats and shore fisherman around us seemed to be having decent luck throughout the day, but you couldn't have paid me to throw that setup on this day.

Luckily, things picked up around 4, and we had pretty good action there for a couple hours. We were able to target feeding trout and managed to put a few in the net and missed a few others. On a day where I did not care if I caught a fish or not, they truly were the icing on the caking to a already perfect day.

... Well it was perfect till we got to the boat launch and I realized I had left my car keys back in the other truck.

While the flows are high and the fishing may still be a bit slow at times, I would not skip out on an opportunity to fish this river. The tranquility and beauty of this place are hard to match and with water temps being as low as they are the river has yet to fill up with recreational floaters.