British Columbia for the First Time

If you have ever thought about making that first trip to British Columbia, it would be hard not to be a bit overwhelmed with the project. The sheer size of B.C. is daunting; almost as large in land mass of California, Oregon and Montana combined and for you Euros, it’s bigger than both France and Spain. So, it can be hard not to feel like an ant on a super large picnic table looking for the cookies. Add to this, the seasonal changes, and you’ll also pay more attention to the timing of your trips.

By: DAVID LAMBROUGHTON

STILLWATERS…

Years ago, I wrote a story about “Where Montana Meets Alaska” and that exactly describes British Columbia; a magical place with myriads of lakes, trout streams, and steelhead rivers crammed in between the arctic and the Pacific midwest. As a photographer, it’s been a wonderful gift to me and my annual Fly Fishing Dreams calendar for over 30 years now and counting. Stillwaters…

You can always tell when the countless small lakes start to open in early spring as you start seeing car top boats whizzing down the highway. In May and June, with the longer days, these fisheries start firing on all cylinders and hundreds of little rustic fishing lodges around the province are renting out their lakeside cabins and boats. But if you would want to step it up a bit, Google: DouglasLake.Com. This is a working Cattle Ranch with a whole bunch of well managed lakes on it, and like almost all the B.C. trout lakes that can produce some large fish, May- June and September-early October would be their best months.

Other well-liked lodges, that are within an hour or two from the fishy city of Kamloops, would be Tunkwa Lake Lodge, Knouff Lake Lodge, and south of town, Roche Lake Lodge. But if you want to really focus on some lake fishing, just go to Riseform.Com. This is the website of Brian Chan and it will open the whole stillwaster scene for you. Brian and his good buddy Phil Rowley have put out tons of info; books, videos, seminars (at great lakes!), blogs, hosted trips, TV Shows, etc. They have been the Gold Standard for B.C. Lake Fishing for decades.

THE TROUT RIVERS….

With so many super large lakes and rivers that both feed and drain them, there are some famous intersections where large trout intercept the newly hatched salmon fry. Places like Little River or the Adams River in the Shuswap Lake System comes to mind, as does the Babine River, or where the Horsefly River meets Quesnel Lake.

But these fisheries and others like them can be hard to time, even for the locals, and it often intermingles with snotty spring weather, sitting in a boat, or the need to be on the water at daybreak. So my journey through all this has steadily pushed me towards the smaller rivers and streams that have the fishing I like best with hatches, dry flies, light rods and no need for anything but a floating line. Here’s a few notable rivers.

Chilko River; Draining Chilko Lake in the Canadian Coastals, this is one of the most stunning settings in all of B.C. and being that it comes off a lake, always crystal clear. The resort, Chilko Lake Lodge (info@chilkolake lodge.ca), would be the place to stay and there’s all kinds of things to do beside chasing the rainbows and some very large dolly varden. The outflow of the lake also has nice evening caddis hatches. Stellako River; Flowing out of Francois Lake, the Stellako runs clear and has some really good hatches, the big stoneflies too, and June or early July would be a good time for it. There is also a nice little lodge right where it leaves the lake, called Stellako Lake Lodge (phone: 250-699-6695).

Thompson River; Every time I go to the Thompson, I swear I’ll never return. It’s BIG, very slippery, flows through a dry forbidding environment that can easily hit 40 degrees Celsius in July and August, but it’s a fish factory where the trout move up and down the river to meet both hatches and intercepting the salmon fry migrations. We float it in small boats (Water Striders) and if you don’t have much experience running rivers, you might want to take a pass on it because you could end up on the 6 o’clock news. But when people from far-away places contact me looking for info or a game plan for a nice B.C. Trout Trip, this is what I tell them.

Fly to Calgary, Alberta and rent a car and do a day or two floating on the Bow River, which regularly produces New Zealand/Argentina-sized rainbows and browns. They are stunning photo fish and the best fly shop in town, with top guides, is Fish Tales Fly Shop (.com). They can organize your float trip and put all kinds of X’s on your map to start your road trip south that will take you to the Crowsnest Pass and right past the front door of Vic Bergman’s Crowsnest Anglers (403-564-4333), a great source of on the spot info, as well as guide trips. Just taking a day and driving up the Oldman River and through “The Notch” is worth it in itself just to see this area.

From here you quickly hit the pass and the B.C. border and then you’ll have about a 1 hour downhill glide to the Ski Town of Fernie and a landscape that seems like it might have been purposely designed for west slope cutthroats; big mountains and snowpacks to feed cool water into streams all summer long and the wonderful Southwest exposure of the Elk River Valley that bugs, fish, and wildlife love. Me too. I usually hit Fernie in mid to late July on my way home from Montana/ Idaho and it lights me up. After the often grueling, high focus days of matching hatches on rivers like the Henry’s Fork, Silver Creek, or the Beaverhead, it’s fun to just put on an #12 Elk Hair Caddis (with rubber legs!) and just fish the water and feel like a kid again.

But some drake hatches and other mayflies can kick off selective feeding at times. But still, if you’d like to introduce someone to fly fishing, this would be the place.

Being a ski town, there are tons of places to stay but my annual choice is the Snow Valley Motel (250-423-4421). It’s inexpensive, has Kitchenette Units, and is within a 5 minute walk to the two fly shops in town, plus several nice restaurants (The Curry Bowl or the Bridge River Bistro) and you can park right at door, which is nice with gear, ice chests, etc.

To hook up with some really good fishing guides and do some floating, go to Dave- BrownOutfitters.Com and look at all the rivers they fish in the area. Dave’s a great guy and has been on the scene for about 25 years. He could also float you down the St. Mary’s River near Kimberly after you continued west after your Fernie stop.

Now, from the Kimberly Cranbrook Area, you turn north and will be driving up the west side of the B.C. Rockies. Your skills have been honed and every stream you cross will have fish but driving up high on the Skookumchuck River, near the hamlet of the same name, or fishing the White River below Whiteswan Lake would be your best choices out of many. From this point you are about 2/3’s your way through the Calgary to Calgary Loop and not that far from the town of Golden, home of Dave Burns and his Golden Gillie Guide Service; fish@goldengillie.com. Dave guides on the Upper Columbia and a number of lakes, many of which lend themselves to sight fishing and I just saw a photo of Brian Chan holding a fish out of one of them that was just short of 12 pounds.

By this point, if you’ve fished half the waters I mentioned, you’ll likely be dragging your arse on the ground as you close the loop and turn east and you might need a day just cruising by Lake Louise and Banff on your way back to Calgary. In all the trout world, I don’t think you could find more attractive scenery than this loop in the B.C. Rockies. It’s basically a mid-July to mid-September season and barbless hooks for all waters, province-wide. I like that.

CHASING THE SUMMER RUNS… THE 100 DAY SEASON

Steelhead run up the rivers of B.C. every month of the year but outside the mid-July to mid-October window it can be tough sledding with few fish or miserable weather - or both. So, the summer runs are the main attraction and first up for me would be Vancouver Island. According to biologists on the Island, all the summer runs will be in their rivers by mid-July, after enjoying the best water conditions between Spring and Summer, to make the jumps and find their canyon pools. But this certainly would not be fishing for everyone. It can be extremely physical as you crawl over the deadfalls, hike around the canyons and if you ever wore waders you could die of heat prostration. Wet wading, as with the B.C. Rockies, is almost always far more comfortable.

But it’s easy, on these island fisheries, to find yourself cut and bruised and looking at your rod-reel and camera and wondering how much you can sell this useless crap for. Then you try one more pool and there they are, a dozen bars of chrome, quietly finning in the tailout, and once again, all is well. It’s upstream fishing with both dries and stonefly nymphs and would be what you would get if you morphed New Zealand trout fishing with the famous Skeena steelhead rivers. If you’ve read the wonderful books by Roderick Haig-Brown, it’s just something you have to do, and it makes the pages come alive.

Now comes August, the center month of the 3-month long season on the Dean River, which is to steelhead fishermen what the Alta would be for the Atlantic salmon crowd. The fish are not quite as large as the fish from the famous Skeena Rivers but often t-shirt weather, warmer water to skate dries on, brighter/fresher fish and the best scenery of all the steelhead rivers more than makes up for it. To pull this trip off, you have 4 lodges spread out from the mouth to about 25 miles upstream. You can also go through a draw system and doing it on your own, either by camping at the bottom end or helicoptering (West Coast Helicopters) to the top and rafting it, with care.

Then comes the month, I always wish was twice as long… September. It might be the best all-around fishing month of them all and it can be hard deciding where to go. But the steelhead gang starts showing up in towns like Terrace, Hazelton, and Smithers and they follow the runs as they make their way up this massive drainage.

The fishing itself is not too complicated. Take a cast, let it swing, take a healthy step downstream and repeat. Think mowing the lawn as you cover the water.

With a couple of friends and some boats and car shuttles, you can easily find water to fish on your own or even just drive to. But if this is your first time, you can pad your bets with some guidance. Here’s some good choices for that.

Poplar Park Farm (kathylarson860@ gmail.com) on the Kispiox River, near Hazelton, would be a top choice. It’s sort of a B&B, except with all the meals and an easy river to float that isn’t going to kill you. There are also lots of pools where you just park your car and hit the trail to the water.

Another good all-inclusive setup would be via WestCoastFishing.Ca in Terrace. Gill Mckean and his wife Mandi have a lodge set up at their home and are booked fairly solid for all the right reasons.

By mid-September and into October, Smithers becomes the place to be and there are several lodges in the area. But I’d first get ahold of Steve Morrow, whose an extremely wellliked guide and who always seems to be in the center of everything steelheadwise, and April Vokey is lucky to have him as a Brother in Law.

Check out info@epicwatersangling. com. Steve also works with Kimsquit Bay Lodge on the Dean earlier in the season and is a calm and relaxed wealth of info.

One more option for planning a steelhead trip to B.C. would be to simply contact Ken Morrish at Fly Water Travel (.com). Steelhead Fishing has always been his passion, he’s fished every decent river from Northern California to Alaska, and he books anglers into all the best lodges in B.C., including those on the Sustut and Babine Rivers.

I’ve been fishing British Columbia since I was a kid in the 60’s and every year I love and appreciate it even more. Like New Zealand, the waters are there for all or in the words of Roderick Haig-Brown, “I like to fish waters that are open to everyone and not the privileged few.” Immigrating to British Columbia in the 70’s after I got out of college was the smartest thing I ever did.