Sep 23
There are a select few places in this world where all the right ingredients come together to grow truly giant lifeforms - The Redwoods of Northern California, Sequoias of the Southern Sierra, and Humans of Houston, TX, to name a few. The Kispiox River in Northern BC is another such place, and grows a super-race of steelhead unlike any other in the world.
At first glance, the Kispiox doesn’t look particularly out of the ordinary, a medium sized stream with beautiful swinging runs, somewhat similar to that of the lower Trask. But as you dig a little deeper, you quickly come to realize that the Kispiox is no ordinary river, and its fish are, simply put, extraordinary.
We began our first day on the Kispiox like every other day in BC, in the wee hours of 11:30am. Within ten minutes, we were floating by Harry Lemire and watching him release a fish that he’d just taken on a single hand rod and a dry line. The Kispiox is that kind of magical place.
We’d planned on fishing Tungsten tips, as that had been the ticket the previous days on the Bulkley, but Mr. Lemire’s feat told us otherwise. Fast forward seven hours of dry lines, Type-3s, and no fish… Ken and I are swinging through upper Potato Patch on opposite sides of the river, Ken with the bright idea to go back to T-11 and myself still stuck on my “Fish will move for the Type-3!!!” mentality.
Within minutes, Ken is into a fish. I put on a Type-6, and keep swinging. Ken loses the fish, and a few minutes later is into another. Same flies, same run, different tips, and I’m getting hosed. I stubbornly continue to swing my Type-6 until Ken hooks his THIRD fish in less than 20 minutes. I rig up 10’ of T-14, go back up to the top of the run where I’d already fished, and about 10 casts later you can guess what happens.
So it went on the Kispiox for three days. Big flies, heavy tips, and the most jawdroppingly large and beautiful sea-run rainbows I’ve ever seen.
Four days later, leaving Smithers on our way back to the US of A, Ken looks at us and says “We’re in the middle of making a huge mistake.”
“What, eating at Dairy Queen?”
“No, leaving this place!!!”
We both get a glimmer of madness in our eyes, bust out the iPhone calendar, and decide to head back up in 4 weeks. See you soon, BC.
39.5”. On a 6126. Good Times.
More pics after the jump…
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Sep 20
Day 1 and 2 - The Drive and The Bulkley
Looking on Google Maps every week for 3 months makes Smithers seem pretty close to Vancouver. But then you start driving, and driving, and driving, and take a wrong turn for an hour, and then the realization kicks in that BC is absolutely enormous. You could drive from Portland to Utah’s Flaming Gorge in about the same amount of time as Vancouver to Smithers. After about 14 hours we finally hit the Bulkley at Smithers, where we based ourselves at the Riverside Campground for the next two days. While the Bulkley is not famed like the Kispiox for putting up 30lb+ fish, it’s certainly famous for it’s quantities of fish. About half of the fish that end up in the Skeena are Bulkley bound, giving this river the distinction of having the largest run of wild Steelhead in the world. With that in mind, we figured that the Bulkley would be an excellent place to start our adventure and each pick up a few fish.
It rained all night and we were up bright and early the next morning, finding a nice little run above Smithers on Tatlow road. The water looked perfect, with good structure and a nice speed. I had a few grabs, including one that felt like a steelhead, but none of us connected with fish.
That afternoon and evening, we fished the hell out of a run just above town, which we’d heard from a couple of sources to be a good run. Hours went by, with no hookups. At one point, fishing over a series of big boulders, I let out a “Here fishy, fishy fishy,” and just like clockwork, a grab came moments later. But it wasn’t a steelhead, just a couple pound Pink which made a decent meal.
With about an hour until dark and still no steelhead hookups, I put on one of my favorite wets I’d tied, something no fish in their right mind could refuse (or so I hoped). Making a few false casts to get my Scandi head out of the guides, I began picking the line off the water for another cast only to feel something at the end of my line. For a split second I thought I was somehow attached to a rock, which made no sense as my fly was hanging in 3 feet deep water for less than a second. And then, the surface explodes with a chrome bright fish that starts going absolutely nuts! It may not be a conventional way to catch a steelhead, but I won’t complain! I fight the fish for about a minute, he does a great run and I bring him back in, but on his second run he makes a series of jumps and manages to throw the hook. We go on fishing for another 30 minutes or so, and call it a night.
Day 3 - The Bulkley
Every day’s a new day with steelheading, and we hoped that our second day on the Bulkley would go better than the first. We fished the run across from Riverside, an amazing kilometer long run which Niall accurately described as “A work of Art.” We covered all parts of the run with wakers, wets, and sink tips, and didn’t move a single fish. The runs on the Bulkley are nothing like the Oregon Coast or the Deschutes, and the closest parallel I could draw are some of the runs on the Sandy or Clack. Long, wide, and very shallow, with few of the classic hydraulic features I typically look for when steelheading. In some spots you could probably almost walk across the run, even at 3,000CFS. With no real hydraulic features to look for, the fish could literally be anywhere, and for whatever reason we couldn’t find them.
After the morning session, I was beginning to believe that we were the worst Steelheaders in BC. The fish of 1,000 casts was becoming the fish of 5,000 casts on the best steelhead river in the world. Doug and Niall decided to tie some flies, while I decided to invoke the Nuclear Option: A Girdle Bug below an indicator.
The sun was blazing down on the river at this point, and I figured I’d at least have a good shot at a nice Dolly by nymphing deep. Leaving Doug and Niall with a walkie talkie, I headed down to the river to a little bucket I’d spied from the opposite bank that morning. Literally three casts in, my indicator drops and I set into something substantial, a big Dolly I assume. I calmly radio to Niall that I think I’ve got a Dolly and that they should come down for a picture, when all of a sudden the fish starts jumping like crazy and I start screaming like a lunatic. Holy Creole, it’s a steelhead, and Girdle Bug or not, I’ll take it! It did feel a bit cheap on the girdle, and fishing an indicator was the last thing I expected to do on the Bulkley, but it proved to be just the shot in the arm that we needed. A few hours later we packed up camp and headed downstream towards the Skeena, where things would really get interesting.
