I know the St. Joe isn't in WA but I figure with all the talk of the Yakima potentially going downhill, some of the list members may be starting to want info on other rivers in the inland regions. I fished the St. Joe all day on Sunday. It was about 80 most of the day and not a cloud in the sky. Great for a suntan, bad for insect hatches. I guess there was a tremendous Pale Morning Dun hatch on Saturday. Sunday consisted of inconsistent PMD and Brown Mayflys coming off. The water was also still a bit high for effective wading out to a lot of the pocket water fishing, and when you could get out there, the fish weren't eager to come up to a dry. It took me a while to find water with lots of fish in it. About noon, I found a hole just above the Fly Flat campsite and landed my first cutt of the day. About 10 inches so nothing to write home about. Very pretty fish though. I had two other hits but failed to hook up. I did have a beautiful, mature fish rise right in front of me but I couldn't convince him to come up to my fly. Around 2 o'clock, I finally found the type of water I know how to fish well. It was a traditional ripple, deep pool and tailout water and the fish were in there pretty thick. Missed a beauty on the first cast and had another nice one on for a second. That was it for the dry fly action so switched to the chuck and duck method with a caddis larvae. Took a nice fish first cast, tied into a nice fish the second but the hook pulled out and then I proceeded to land several more before I lost the fly on a rock. Unfortunately that was the only one I had with me. I decided to call it a day and drove the river all the way back home. Interestingly enough, the action described above was about 5 miles below the famous catch and release waters. If anybody would like information on the Joe, email me and I can give a rookies rundown on the waters. I drove it from about 10 miles above Gold Creek all the way to St. Maries and also passed the North Fork on the way to the river that morning. Mike
