"The Bookends"
Hey guys this will be part one in a series of reports around Kim and my recent time spent up north. It is titled "the bookends" since we spent 2 great days fly fishing a world class central BC trout stream on either end of our trip, to break up the long drive north-west. On the way up the trout fishing was classic- dry flies for free-rising bows along with some great May and sedge hatches. Two weeks later when we stopped by on the way home, the river had filled with sockeye and the fishing was much different- we were still able to raise a few smaller fish to dries but the big bows were thinking glow bug all the way.......
Here is a pic of Kim packing the bear spray and a nice little bow on our first day
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You can see by looking at this picture the water is super rich and the rocks are covered in some great brown algae.
This river is know to hold some rainbows in the 5+ pound class but we were not skillfull enough to fool any of them either day. As with most C+R flyfishing only waterbodies the big old vets have seen alot of bugs over the years and are pretty canny. Here is a typical bow from our two days here:
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The scenery is classice boreal- dominated by spruce and somewhat flat. To give you an idea of the scenery and size of the river, I will include this pic of Kim laying out a nice cast over some canny feeding bows
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On the trip home when we moved to glow buggin' we also found ourselves hooking a few of these
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I always find the change in trout behavior to be very interesting once an abundance of salmon move in, they seem excited, yet a little bit nervous. I imagine they are thinking "boy look at all this food, in a couple months these will all be dead and we will be eating them!" The flip side of that though is for now the salmon are a force to be recconed with, and male sockeye will be happy to clamp their big teeth onto the side of an unwary bow who comes a bit to close while foraging for eggs.
I really enjoyed these two day of fly fishing, a great way to break up a loooong drive and a must do on any trip I take up north-west. The late august day was far better, once the sockeye moved in on our trip home the fishing got tough. I would suggest that the first week of september would be the absolute latest that you would want to push your trip if you are looking for classic trout fishing on sockeye streams in this area.
To end this segment off I will leave you with one last picture- contemplating a good day at last light before the hike back!
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Hey guys this will be part one in a series of reports around Kim and my recent time spent up north. It is titled "the bookends" since we spent 2 great days fly fishing a world class central BC trout stream on either end of our trip, to break up the long drive north-west. On the way up the trout fishing was classic- dry flies for free-rising bows along with some great May and sedge hatches. Two weeks later when we stopped by on the way home, the river had filled with sockeye and the fishing was much different- we were still able to raise a few smaller fish to dries but the big bows were thinking glow bug all the way.......
Here is a pic of Kim packing the bear spray and a nice little bow on our first day
You can see by looking at this picture the water is super rich and the rocks are covered in some great brown algae.
This river is know to hold some rainbows in the 5+ pound class but we were not skillfull enough to fool any of them either day. As with most C+R flyfishing only waterbodies the big old vets have seen alot of bugs over the years and are pretty canny. Here is a typical bow from our two days here:
The scenery is classice boreal- dominated by spruce and somewhat flat. To give you an idea of the scenery and size of the river, I will include this pic of Kim laying out a nice cast over some canny feeding bows
On the trip home when we moved to glow buggin' we also found ourselves hooking a few of these
I always find the change in trout behavior to be very interesting once an abundance of salmon move in, they seem excited, yet a little bit nervous. I imagine they are thinking "boy look at all this food, in a couple months these will all be dead and we will be eating them!" The flip side of that though is for now the salmon are a force to be recconed with, and male sockeye will be happy to clamp their big teeth onto the side of an unwary bow who comes a bit to close while foraging for eggs.
I really enjoyed these two day of fly fishing, a great way to break up a loooong drive and a must do on any trip I take up north-west. The late august day was far better, once the sockeye moved in on our trip home the fishing got tough. I would suggest that the first week of september would be the absolute latest that you would want to push your trip if you are looking for classic trout fishing on sockeye streams in this area.
To end this segment off I will leave you with one last picture- contemplating a good day at last light before the hike back!
...and part of our day catching beautiful chinook, coho and chum. The river we were on was one of my favorites and thoughts of it have haunted me since my last visit there three years ago. It is a very unique river in that much of it flows through lava beds and the only way to access it is by walking across these really cool old volcanic formations. The color of the water is also very special as the river flows an intoxicating shade of bluish green that just screams fish......
