The Big Catch

I renewed my Idaho fishing license Saturday morning while trying to keep tossing the frisbee for my dog. I didn’t care if I caught any fish, I just wanted to get a fly wet as early in the year as possible. My motorcycle riding friend and I had decided to take a day trip up to Avery to visit our friends that own TFP’s pizza parlor. He wanted to ride our bikes and I just didn’t feel up to it because I’ve been on the verge of getting sick and had just gotten over the flu earlier in the week.

He was running late and I was hungry and couldn’t wait to get to St. Maries for a breakfast of sausage links and pancakes at the lumberjack cafe. The turnoff at Plummer leads to the winding road along the southwest side of Lake Coeur d’Alene. It is different in a Subaru than on my motorcycle or in my truck that blends in with the majority of the vehicles on the road.

There is something about St. Maries and that restaurant that stirs my spirit. It brings me back to my childhood where I remember camping, fishing, and hunting and I am reminded of traveling to boxing tournaments with a team from St. Maries and a kid name Ryan Jeffries whom I fought at least three times and became friends with outside the ring. It was a blue collar existence that contained a lot of discipline, toughness and dignity.

I was surprised to hear our waitress Kathy had not heard of the movie Train Dreams that is a love letter to this lifestyle. It seems like Hollywood forgot to tell them about it. The people in these towns have an indigenous knowledge of the land that is under appreciated. My friend asked about a ruler that was mounted on a shelf and we learned that Kathy had a degree in forest management and could tell us that this particular ruler was used to measure log diameters and gave the necessary information to compute the predicted board feet to be had out of that log.

With my stomach filled and topped off with coffee we hit the road again. A couple of turns and we were on the St. Joe River Road.

The Joe is the highest elevation navigable river in the United States. It is known as the Shadowy St. Joe. Just beyond the first campground we caught sight of two bull moose. I would have missed it if Shane hadn’t pointed them out. I found a place to turn around and another wide spot to pull over. We got out and crossed the road and the Moose looked up at us. After a few moments they stopped caring and went back to their natural behavior.

I see moose in my back yard fairly frequently but I have rarely seen them in the water in habitat that looks perfect for them. I could hear the splash of water as they walked across the pond and I could hear the drops from their chin when their large heads emerge from the water.

The two bulls hung together but were like me and my friend when we ride motorcycles. Together but separate. Close by but not next to each other. It was hard to get a photograph of the two of them together that made sense.

After a bit the two headed off. For a moment the two overlapped each other and turned back as if they were saying goodbye to us. I did get my fly line in the water a little while later but I didn’t catch anything. I think the photos were the biggest catch I could hope for.