Road Trips: Idaho’s Coeur d’Alene River for Father/Son 4-Weight Fun

My 15 year old son, Jack, is a great kid. He’s a top-notch student athlete, helps his mom, and serves as the in-house IT tech, modern culture advisor, and Gen-Z language interpreter in exchange for room and board.

But despite these worthy attributes, he does have one deep flaw: he’s not much for fly fishing.

I know, I know…his mother and I are horrified. It’s especially difficult for my wife. She’s from Northern Idaho, where every newborn is issued a baby-sized utility trailer to practice backing up, a future deed to a ginormous garage known as a “shop,” and a fly rod.

Despite repeated efforts, I’ve largely failed to get him to put down the ball (he plays three sports) and pick up the fly rod. He’s successfully given me the “Heisman” on fly fishing — until recently when I called an audible.

We were making our annual summer trek to Coeur d’Alene to visit the outlaws, er, in-laws. In order to preserve my sanity, I always plan a day on the water with the outfitter that got me hooked on fly fishing: Joe Roope’s Castaway Fly Shop.

On this visit, I insisted that in exchange for running endless pass patterns (high school football season is coming), Jack would have to come fly fishing with me on the Coeur d’Alene River for native westslope cutthroat, wild rainbows, and hybrid cutbows.

He wasn’t thrilled, but with a teenage, bone-crunching handshake we had a deal

We hit the water under cloudless, robin-egg blue skies.

Jack took the front of the drift boat and our guide, Ed, gave our young charge a few tips such as not casting over the length of the boat — in other words: “Don’t hook your father!”

For this trip, Ed armed us with 9-foot, 4-weights and informed us it was going to be a dry fly day. While nymphing is productive, casting for cutties on big dries, especially terrestrials, is an ideal way to fish the Coeur d’Alene this time of year.

The river is about 80 percent cutthroat and is renowned for its consistent dry fly action in the summer months. It’s way too easy to get spoiled on this river if you like dry fly fishing and lots of surface action. Even better, cutthroat are great for beginners since they will devour a dry fly. I see the westslope cutthroat as similar to eastern brook trout: aggressive, opportunistic feeders, which rarely let a meal get away if they can help it. 

Even better for the newbie fly fisher is that there’s usually no need for a big pause on a surface strike. In my experience, these cutties aren’t sippers; they slash at the fly, turn, and they’re gone. It’s game on in the blink of an eye.

Indeed, these fish will often hook themselves – and to my chagrin, Jack got on the board first with a small cuttie that swallowed his grasshopper imitation. (To say that we’re competitive would be an understatement; the trash talking came fast and furious.)