When the St. Joe River Road was built decades ago, however, the days of that fishing hole were numbered. "The roadway filled the hole in," Wolfe says as a man would who lost a favorite hound long ago. This displeasure of the deed has since been smoothed by the years, and given way to the realization that the road, when it was built to connect St. Maries to a ranger station at Red Ives, more than 90 miles upstream, has its benefits.

Fisherman can follow the road east into the Bitterroots for hours, stopping along the way to test the waters, because the river is seldom more than a roll cast from the asphalt of Forest Road 50 -- another name for the St. Joe River Road.

According to Idaho Fish and Game, the number of cutthroat trout in the St. Joe River varies from 800 to 1,200 per mile, and more than 30 percent of the fish are over 12 inches long.

That makes the river an ideal place to spend a summer with a fly rod.

"The St. Joe is a very popular river," said state biologist Ned Horner, who has studied the St. Joe fishery for years. "It's readily accessible because the road follows the river most of the way."

Combine the beautiful scenery, the mountain forests of fir and tamarack and the high piney knolls that overlook the blue waters of the river as it runs swiftly through crags and past stony bars, and it's no marvel that the St. Joe is a much sought-after destination for cutthroat enthusiasts.

"It gets pretty good fishing pressure," in the peak summer months, Horner said. "We're noticing a pretty significant number of fish showing hook scars. It appears the fish are getting smarter and more difficult to catch."

A lot of fishermen who first come to the St. Joe Country fish holes that are easy to spot and close to the road. They tend to hook smaller trout, he said. "They may fish and catch fair number of small fish and get the impression that there aren't many big fish," he said. "But, when we do snorkeling transects, we see a lot of big fish.

"The big ones just aren't as dumb as they used to be. More than a third of the fish we see are over 12 inches."

FISHING THE ST. JOE
Fishing in the Joe, as locals call the river, starts in the spring when the cottonwood trees along the lower river at St. Joe City, about 12 miles upstream from St. Maries, begin dropping their downy seeds. The snowflake-like seeds cover eddies in the lower river with a swirling white film.

That's when Wolfe, who lives nearby, employs mayfly imitations. "About the first of June you start with mayflies and maybe a caddis," Wolfe says. "Then about the second week of July your periwinkles hatch out and you go to a Goddards Caddis," he said.

The Goddards is a spun hair fly with a hackle. Wolfe alternates it with a Stimulator, an attractor pattern that roughly matches the color and shape of insects on the water. The materials used in a Stimulator cause fish to bite by "stimulating" feeding reflexes. Stimulators are a combination of dry fly and attractor.

CUTTHROAT TROUT
According to Wolfe, there are a variety of St. Joe River cutthroat, including pure strains of West Slope cutthroat that are found mostly in feeder streams where they haven't been subject to hybridization with the rainbow trout that were planted for decades by the game department.