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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
