British Columbia: The Last Frontier
A guide's guide to the best trout rivers

When I first began running around B.C. in the mid-70s it was slow going. A lot of the rivers I tried didn't seem to have much in them, and when I turned over the rocks, the bottoms were washed just about as clean as the tops. Great spawning water, but the biomass to carry much of a fish population, other than perhaps some pre-migrant steelhead or salmon smolts, just wasn't there. Local knowledge was also in short supply, and to a certain extent, still is, as British Columbians still do over 90 percent of their trout fishing in lakes. I began to fully understand what Haig-Brown meant when he wrote, "I had to find out a great deal for myself, which is a fascinating process but a slow one."

I also started to find that the trail was often a bit blurred because in many systems the rainbows like to move around, especially in fisheries with salmon runs. This can pull the rainbows out of a huge lake and into a river to feed on the loose eggs in the fall. It can also stack them up in the spring and early summer off the bocas to stuff themselves with the newly-emerged salmon fry. Then, once the fry have run the gauntlet, the lake rainbows may shoot up the rivers to follow the salmonfly hatches.

So all this on many rivers can give the fisheries a real hit-or-miss, feast-or-famine quality, which makes you pay a lot more attention to the timing of your trips. You also learn to appreciate good guides, especially since there are so few of them.

The B.C. government gives out few guide licenses for rivers, and I'm sure that there are more guides living in Calgary and working the Bow River than in all of B.C. Also, the licenses come with strict rod-day limits. So the infrastructure that eventually leads to a lineup of driftboats waiting to launch at some river put-in just isn't there and never will be.

The first guide I stumbled upon was Ron Thompson of Williams Lake, B.C., back in 1981. Ron's been guiding and doing float trips since the 1970s on probably B.C.'s most prolific river, the Blackwater (see sidebar), which drains the northwest Caribou Country and empties into the Fraser River. I've never fished a river with such a summer-long feeding frenzy.

Ron does three- to five-day float trips, and I've often thought that the fishing would be better if it was half as good, especially on my last trip there. Ron called me in June to see if I'd be interested in seeing the upper river, as he needed to drive some gear in. Normally when he floats this section, which starts at the outlet of Kluskoil Lake, he'll have his clients come in by floatplane; now I know why. It's a lengthy drive that finishes with 30 miles of the greatest collection of mud holes that I've ever seen.

The Blackwater works well with another Caribou river, the Chilko, and Ron often has his groups split their week with a few days on it. This makes for a great combo trip and a chance for larger rainbows in a totally different type of fishery and setting.

At 4,000 feet, Chilko Lake is a huge settling pond for a number of glacial rivers and streams that drain the eastern slope of the magnificent Canadian Coastal Range. By the time the water makes it to the outlet, it leaves the lake New Zealand-clear as it passes in front of Chilko Lake Resort--itself a great destination where you can also hike or take horses into the high country, play tennis, or split the cost of a floatplane with friends and fly into remote trout lakes. It's been an annual stop for me for years, and I think I've seen, bit by bit, the entire trout season unfold.

In June, the newly emerged sockeye fry are on the menu along with smolts that spent a year in the lake before heading downriver. The rainbows, mostly in the 16- to 24-inch range, will be waiting, along with a few huge Dolly Vardens, and it's a good time to sweep the runs with a Teeny line and streamers or Muddlers. This early-season fishing goes on until early July when the golden stoneflies start popping. The hatch lingers through August. There are also great caddis hatches most summer evenings, and the smooth water in front of the resort is a good place to get your backing well stretched with a #16 or #14 Adams or Hatch Master. By early September the menu shifts again as the sockeye begin to arrive and the rainbows line up behind them, waiting for the egg feast to begin.

I remember a few years ago when I arrived on September 3 on my way back from a steelhead trip. Peter Church, perhaps New Zealand's busiest fishing guide from Turangi, was with me. Over the years I've watched Peter vacuum a number of different rivers, but this time he outdid himself.

I floated him down from the lake and we got two nice fish on drys, then I turned him loose on my favorite gravel bar which runs diagonally almost across the near-Missouri River-size flow. In 4 1/2 hours, while I fooled around with my cameras, Peter landed 54 rainbows from two to six pounds, using an indicator and egg pattern.

Shortly after Peter arrived, I got a call from an old friend, well-known Bow River guide Dave Brown from Calgary. He asked me if I'd be interested in joining him in exploring a new river he had heard about in the southeast corner of B.C., the Elk River. What a wonderful surprise the Elk turned out to be. Now I know why he has decided to spend his summers guiding on it.

Cutting its way through the Canadian Rockies in a wildlife-filled valley, the Elk is stunningly beautiful. It supports an excellent population of silver, hard-bodied West Slope cutthroat that frequent the 12- to 20-inch range and are well distributed in over 50 miles of river that's perfect for driftboat fishing. With great hatches throughout the season, the cutts take drys beautifully, and working your way up the softer water below a riffle or back channel with a weighted Flashback Caddis or similar #12 or #14 nymph pattern, can be deadly practically all of the time.

If you are familiar with the Snake River and Jackson Hole as it was in the 1960s, you'll notice similarities between them and the Elk and Fernie, a sleepy little ski town. There is great water in all directions.

Besides the Elk and her delightful little tributary streams, some of which also support rainbows, you can pop over the mountains to the next valley and explore the Bull River Drainage. And if you head east over the Crowsnest Pass into Alberta and enter Vic Bergman country, you'll feel like you're in Colorado.

Vic guides out of his Bellevue fly shop on a number of different rivers like the Castle, Oldman, Crowsnest, plus lots of "mystery creeks." You could easily put together an itinerary with Vic and Dave that would include a half-dozen or more rivers that drain both sides of the Rockies. It can make for a great road trip, especially if you include Banff and Lake Louise. You are also within three hours of Calgary, which has an international airport, and the Bow River, which has fished quite well these past few seasons.

Another route that leads to great trout rivers starts in the historic trout city of Kamloops, which is on the Thompson River, itself a good fishery. From here head up the Yellowhead Highway to the hamlet of Little Fort.

Stop at Little Fort Fly and Tackle owned by Steve Jennings. Steve can put a few X's on your map; you'll need them, because the area has more water than land and predicting the season and the hatches takes more than a little practice.

Steve guides on the lakes and on rivers like the Mahood and Clearwater. He also sometimes heads west on Highway 24 and then turns north on Highway 97 to fish the Canim River during the stonefly hatch. This isn't a river for the weak or timid. It's water that you hike and fish, and it looks and feels just like the Box Canyon stretch on the Henry's Fork.


Anglers must hike to the Canim River to see the falls and enjoy the fishing. It looks like the Box Canyon stretch on Idaho's Henry's Fork.

This is wild country where the wolves eat the moose. If you continue north, you'll come to the town of Quesnel, where you'll want to stop at Caribou Fly and Tackle to see the owner, Doug Brautigan.

Every time I stop there, Doug's shop seems bigger and I notice more fresh photos of 10-pound-plus rainbows on the walls than in any other shop in B.C. Most come from local lakes, especially Dragon Lake--a great place to retreat to in the fall if you get washed out of the Skeena steelhead rivers. But some of the fish are from rivers like the Quesnel and Horsefly, which can produce absolutely huge rainbows, especially in seasons following two consecutive years of large sockeye returns. It is hit-and-miss fishing at its best.

To the north lies the city of Prince George, which you can bypass by making a left on Highway 16. This is our traditional fall route that leads to the steelhead rivers of the Skeena system. In the summer months, however, it leads to some excellent trout rivers, and the first one is the Stellako River west of the little town of Fraser Lake. From the highway bridge it doesn't look too inviting, just slow water that meanders into Fraser Lake. But if you take the first gravel road just before the bridge, it will lead seven miles upstream to the source of the Stellako, Francois Lake, which warms and clears the water.


A kick-boat or raft can make it easy to access some of B.C.'s remote lakes and rivers.

For the skilled fisher, it's a good river to run in a raft or pontoon boat; it's like a larger version of the Madison River between Hebgen and Quake lakes. It gets a great stonefly hatch in late June or early July, and caddis and mayfly hatches carry on from there. If you run it, be prepared to portage around the remains of an old water diversion scheme about halfway down. Stellako Lodge, with riverside cabins, is a nice place to stay at the top of the river.

As for the steelhead rivers themselves, few have good resident trout populations. But the Babine River does, and Babine Norlakes Lodge near the outlet of the 110-mile Babine Lake, offers trout fishing on four miles of river that is divided in the middle by the seven-mile-long Nilkitkwa Lake, itself an excellent fishery.

The Babine fishery starts in mid-May with the annual fry feast. The section between the lakes is called "Rainbow Alley," one of the great bottlenecks in B.C., where the rainbows, mostly in the 2- to 8-pound club, gather en masse for a month-long feeding frenzy. They can be selective, but Pierce Clegg, the owner of Babine Norlakes Lodge, has fine-tuned his fry patterns.

By mid-June, most of the fry will have passed and the caddis, mayfly, and stonefly hatches take over. The river below Nilkitkwa Lake is especially good stonefly habitat, and in July the trout average almost four pounds. The fishery is diversified and challenging, but if you'd like to add another river to your trip, Pierce can arrange a few days on the Firesteel, a short floatplane hop to the north, where you can catch more 1- to 3-pound rainbows than you need.

By the end of August, the attention on the Babine shifts to the 4,000 to 11,000 steelhead that will arrive in September and October. September trout fishing in the other Skeena rivers really isn't worth it, so we head south to the last good trout river of the season, the Adams River. Connecting Adams Lake with Shuswap Lake, the 7-mile-long Adams gets the biggest sockeye return of them all. It's a fast-flowing, highly-oxygenated river that is not for novice oarsmen. It's got a wild canyon stretch that can really get your attention, especially in a small pontoon boat. There's a lot of good water on the river.

On one trip the sockeye were still two weeks away from their egg-laying and we worked hard for each rainbow. Then, in a small side channel, I saw the shapes of a dozen spawning Chinook salmon, with rainbows stacked in behind them. For the rest of the day we went from one batch of Chinooks to the next catching rainbows from 16- to 22-inches long. It was a great day and by the time we got to the boca of Shuswap Lake, which produces several 10-pound-plus fish every year, it was getting too dark to fish.

Two weeks later I ran the Adams again. The Chinooks were fertilizing the river with their decaying bodies. The sockeye had laid their eggs and were now defending their redds and biting anything, including our flies, that passed in front of them. The rainbows were pretty much chased out of the runs. My trout season was over.

Besides all the rivers I've mentioned, B.C. has other flowing trout waters that in recent years have grabbed my attention just as much--the great unknowns. It's an adventurer's paradise. Whether you slip on a backpack, get dropped off by a floatplane, or canoe across some huge wilderness lake to a distant stream, you can put yourself in timeless environments, unchanged for centuries. To string your rod in such places and to wander upstream wondering if maybe, just maybe, you are the first person to ever touch that water with a fly is incredibly exciting. It returns me to the roots of our sport.