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Not that it is a secret location, there is even a report on here that gives directions to it, it is simply a commitment to get there... So here we go.
There a multitude of routes that eventually funnel you to reach the trail head before the road dead ends on the summit of Buzzards Roost. The first commitment issue to get there is the drive from St. Marie’s to Avery, where the St. Joe essentially flirts with you, makes you look at her seams and holes that so obviously hold fish, your tires buzz from the rumble strip and you get snapped back to reality. Then you reach Avery, always stop and talk to Scheffy, he will inform you of any road closures. drive south on the logging roads and intersect the upper portion of Little North Fork. (Just below the bridge to the confluence of Adair crick is a phenomenal quick half mile of fishing) once you start to question if you are lost you will find the Buzzards roost 7 miles sign.
Eventually you will get to the trail head.
This is where Sterling’s and my story begin.
We dismount the truck, gear up and make our way down the northbound trail off of buzzards. (There is a trail that makes its way to the river off of the south side of buzzards that was our intended route of return). We were planning on fishing from where the north trail hits the canyon floor, all the way down to Foehl Creek then scale back up the mountain..... In a day....
The north side trail is about 4 miles long and takes about an hour and some change to bottom out. We get to the bottom first thing I do is drop my glasses and step on them with my Korker boot.... sweet..... I find some bailing twine in the camp that is set up in the bottom where the trail meets the river and try and rig them up and with no success we tie on some Unga Gulungas and hit the river working our way down stream... it was September so hundreds of Kokanee littered every hole but were close to being spawned out, we were targeting large cutthroat and bull trout. The primary mission for the trip was to get sterling his first Bully.
Well we start chucking streamers, and it seems that on my favorite river “the force was with Sterling”
He starts landing cutthroat like crazy, the beautiful thing about this river is there is no bad water to attempt. He lands a nice 15” cutt followed up again and again and again... by this point I’m frustrated, I’ve struck out, but it’s early. We make our way to the first major bend in the river, playing leap frog to who gets the first attack at each hole. Finally I connect.
I pull in a decent cutt and the day begins for me. It seems like every hole pocket water or riffle we investigate Sterling is hooking 14-20” cutts. I stopped taking pictures of him to focus on my fishing and slightly out of spite. We begin to near canyon creek and the sun begins to near the western ridge top.
We arrive at a bend in the river with a rock outcropping and a nice shallow run feeding into a deep hole, maybe 40 yards long. Sterling standing above the head water continues to land beautiful cutthroat seemingly every cast. I creep my way down to mid pool and fire a olive Unga up stream along the rock outcropping and allow in to submerge toward the bottom, I begin some 6 inch strips and like a missle a monster rises from the deep and aggressively takes the hook, I look at sterling with my rod in full arch and exclaim BULLTROUT!!!
He abandons his post up in the top of the pool and comes down to net, (mind you I’m playing with Fire considering I’m throwing with a 4wt.... it has life time warranty and I carry a back up, I like the accuracy) bam, first Bully of the day landed, photographed and released. All with speed, precision and respect for these incredible fish.
We allow the hole to settle and reminisce on our victory, and attack again. Bam first cast for me, another Bully on. Same story he comes down nets. Photo, be free little buddy. Now our whole mission was to get Sterling his first Bully, so I let him take my spot. I retreat to a near by log and observe... within a couple casts, Sterling connects with a slender lanky bulltrout, beautiful fish but this guy was obviously built for speed. He lets him wear down and gives him a gentleman’s fight, I get him in the net, same story except this one was sacred, once you’ve landed your first bulltrout in the modern age you enter a new class of angler.
Once he is released we realize we have not made enough progress down river and we are soon going to run out of sunlight and we are a few miles from the confluence of Foehl Creek. We begin the hustle. We soon intersect with an camp on the Larkin’s side of the river, here we found a couple Coleman coolers, a empty bottle of patron, a rusted out fly rod, and a trail that ran through the camp and led to an outhouse... ( I’ve done some research and found the some biologists had a camp roughly in that location and were studying and tagging bulltrout) we followed the trail and it eventually forced us back into the river. We made our way down roughly another couple hundred yards and intersected with the trail 50 crossing and made our way up and towards Foehl Creek.... it was getting late, we kept walking, later, later and later....... we began talking of how we did this trip so wrong and how we should have just camped and took our time instead of promising our wives speed fishing trips. I look at my tracker and see that we are beginning to approach 13 miles on the day. Hungry, tired, exhausted we begin the ascend out of the Foehl Creek drainage up buzzards creek. This is the south side trail that I mentioned earlier. It is a good condition trail but it is significantly more rigorous and difficult than the northern drop off trail that we descended (and I typically ascend) the sun goes down, we flip on the head lights and keep on walking, exhausted to the point from the climb that we are stopping every hundred yards to drink water and regain strength. It becomes pitch black, I keep saying we have to be close, by this point our water supply is depleted, we are both feeling defeated, and begin questioning if we are on the correct trail system. We sit down and try to evaluate the situation, regain strength and hold our composure. We decide we are going to try to stumble on for a bit further. Maybe 50 yards from where we were sitting it the summit o the trail and our truck parked with a cooler full of sandwiches and delicious beer......
We enduldge and make our way home, swinging up round top to where you get cell reception. Informing our wives we are alive and make our way home.
The day was a great successful day. We left Coeur D Alene at 4 am, and returned home at 2am the next morning...
Buzzards roost is beautiful, sublime, and takes commitment. But if you can find it in yourself to accept the challenge you will be rewarded.
Adam.
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