Steelhead Season: Old Friends and New Experiences

This time of year the phone starts ringing with people asking about what’s happening with the steelhead runs here in B.C. and looking for advice on the “where and whens” of it all. To this I like to point out that the fishing weather and water conditions can be very unpredictable, and it’s a lot easier and cheaper just to have a few drinks at home and then throw mud all over your car. But, of course, you have to go if you can, and after doing it for so many years it feels like it’s in my September DNA. There will be a gathering of friends to catch up with, campfires to share, stories to tell and a time for remembering old friends who finally ran out of Septembers.

If you travel and fish widely, steelhead fishing seems to be where anglers often end up. No more fiddling with light fragile tippets and trying to match the hatches early in the season on trout streams in Montana or Idaho. Now it’s nice fat 10 or 12 pound Maxima tippets that don’t mark the fish up like the thinner latest/greatest fluorocarbon tippets can. Then it’s working your way down the runs and pools. It’s wonderfully simple, like mowing the lawn with three to five foot swaths. You can get lost in your thoughts, enjoying the scenery, then every once in a while a tug snaps you out of your trance and once again you are firmly attached to something wild and wonderful and all hell breaks loose.

Chasing the summer run steelhead here in B.C. has held me firmly by my cajones for the past 45 years and counting. I’ve always looked at it as a 100 days season. First up are the little rivers that drain the west side of Vancouver Island (many now closed because of low returns), and if you morphed N.Z. trout fishing with the Skeena steelhead rivers the result would be these small rivers with lots of sight-fishing included. The regional biologist told me that all the fish are in my mid-July, often our arrival time, and we would quietly fish upstream to hide ourselves.

But this would not be fishing for everybody. Canyons, boulders, faint game trails, devil’s club, deadfalls, etc.—no place to wear waders nor need to. But bring bandaids. You’ll likely need them. And never do trips like this on your own because this is cougar country on steroids. But walking through some of the last stands of old-growth forests is wonderful to experience in itself. If you catch a fish or two, you’ve done well. Reading Haig-Brown’s Fisherman’s Fall (page 165, “The Ideal Stream”) would be a great place to start, and you’ll be stepping on some of the same stones he did.

Then in August my attention shifts up to the Dean River that for decades has eaten up most of the month for me. I would host a week or two at Nakia Lodge (now called  B.C. West) near the bottom and then sometimes helicopter to the top and do a 10-plus day float trip down it. The Dean would certainly be considered the most beautiful Steelhead River in B.C., and the 4 lodges along its bottom 25 miles are still doing well. You can also go through the Draw System and helicopter in from Hagensborg for camping or a float trip.

Then comes there wonderful month of September and the long drive north to the Skeena Drainage for maybe the best days of the season with easily accessible water. I’m getting my gear ready as I write this. It’s the time old fishing friends get together and set up camps on rivers like the Morice, Bulkley, Kispiox, or Copper and settle in for a week or two or longer—the better to increase your odds of hitting the best weather/water windows.

Make no mistake, these camp outs take a bit of effort. But sitting around a nice fire at night with solid friends after a memorable day of fishing is priceless and well worth it. In this regard, I feel so lucky to share these experiences with seasoned veterans who have seen it all: lots of fish, few fish, praying for rain to bring them in, or praying for the rain to stop and not to wash our camp away. It seems as though everyone works well together and are in the same orbit. That’s really the key. Fishing with friends who have lots of steelhead under their belt it lends itself to a very relaxed, non-competitive atmosphere. We also like to do our drifts in little Water Strider boats that travel so well and are hard to flip with their low centre of gravity.

As for the fishing, it’s nice to do floats with a friend and the first guy will stay quite shallow and skate a dry and the second will wade a bit deeper with a wet fly or in my case, a weighted #2 Stonefly Nymph. After that, someone may make a pass with a sink tip line if there’s some deeper water. But a floating  line on a 7-8 Spey Rod is the clear favorite. It’s a nice way to share the pool and the fish, and cover lots of water while hitting the next piece that looks good.

We also like to help each other land fish as it cuts down on broken rods and, as an English friend said, “leave it to the English to invent a style of fishing (Spey rods) that requires a gillie.” But more important, it’s much easier on the fish because we always want to leave them that honorable foot of water so no fish ever gets bounced on rocks. They’re always respected like the treasures they are.