Angling for a fresh start

BOVILL, Idaho – Joe plunges a narrow shovel into the rich black soil beside a rushing creek, drops a sedge into the hole and packs it tight.

He repeats the move several times, until his satchel of riparian plants is empty. Joe is one in a group of about 10 teenage boys with troubled pasts clad in hip waders and sweatshirts getting dirty in the headwaters of the East Fork of the Potlatch Creek.

He and the rest of the boys are helping a habitat improvement crew from the Idaho Department of Fish and Game plant riparian vegetation along the creek as it meanders through a meadow. Not too long ago adult steelhead returned to the small creek to spawn. The plants the boys are dropping into holes will help stabilize the stream’s banks, reduce erosion and provide shade for the young steelhead that will soon emerge from redds on the creek’s gravelly bottom.

The young fish will need a healthy environment if they are to mature, make their way to the Pacific Ocean and eventually return to spawn. As they rear in the stream, they will learn how to feed, how to dart away from predators and generally how to survive and thrive.

The boys are learning similar life lessons that will help them cope with the outside world once they are released. But it will be largely up to them to use the skills they are learning to build their own healthy environments so they can survive in what can seem to be a hostile world. Each is a resident at the Idaho Juvenile Corrections Center in Lewiston. This day they are on a field trip and working with mentors from the Kelly Creek Flycasters, a Lewiston-Clarkston-based fly-fishing club.

The mentors have been meeting with the boys – whose last names are being withheld because they are juveniles – for weeks, teaching them the basics of fly-fishing. The students have learned about the life cycle of salmon, trout and steelhead. They’ve been taught to tie flies and fishing knots. They’ve been schooled in fly casting, and just a few days ago spent a few hours fly-fishing at the Birling Pond in North Lewiston. For most of them it was their first experience fly-fishing and one they had to earn with good behavior and marked progress toward the ultimate goal of winning their release.

“To me it’s pretty cool to get out here and do something that is going to help, rather than just taking up space,” Joe says. “It gives us an opportunity to apply some of the things we have been taught.”

Those things are not just about fish habitat and biology. The lessons include working together, communicating with strangers and even trusting adults.

Joe says his family likes to camp along the North Fork of the Clearwater River and he is eager to show off his newly acquired fly-fishing skills once he is released. The Kelly Creek Flycasters hope he does just that and finds fly-fishing far more enticing than the allure of drugs, violence or other illegal activities.

But the adults know not all the boys will be converts to the sport. If the boys gain confidence and learn patience and discipline that will transfer to other aspects of their lives, the effort of the mentors will pay dividends.

That is what one of the instructors, Joe Douglas, of Orofino, tells them during one of the fly-tying lessons.

“You can apply the same kind of effort and discipline to anything in your lives and pass it on,” he says.

Terry Lewis, a unit manager at the facility, is thrilled with the way the program seems to grab the boys. At a fly-casting outing at Hells Gate State Park, he remarks at the attention span the boys are displaying.

“Every kid down there is engaged with an adult separate from the facility. They are building communication skills. They are getting mentoring. I love it.”

When the boys are gathered for a fly-casting contest, Lewis notices one of them cock his cap sideways. The move is not welcomed.

“See now, that is street behavior,” he says and motions to one of his colleagues to correct the boy. But before he can another boy points it out. Lewis smiles. The boys have been learning not only to correct their own mistakes but also to support their peers.

The program culminates with the fishing trip where they all catch and land planted rainbow trout. At the end of the day, the Kelly Creek Flycasters gather the boys to congratulate them on their new skills and present them with graduation gifts. Each of the boys receives a rod and reel, a box of flies and a fly-tying kit. The equipment will be held by the facility and given to them when they are released.

A boy named Spencer is excited. He is due to be released soon and plans on going to Boise State University.

“It’s pretty cool because BSU is right on the river,” he says. “I plan on fishing right on the river.”