Bob has been eager to explore the upper reaches of the Kitwanga River for a couple of years now, at least that’s how long we’ve talked about doing so. The quarry will be rainbow trout; handsome, feisty fish that are motivated to drop downstream from Kitwancool Lake by the promise of feeding on migrant sockeye smolts in the spring or to gobble the eggs and flesh of pinks and coho later in the year.
We make our first joint reconnaissance late in the middle of May. As usual, we muster at the Kitwanga Service Station, it being as far from Bob’s homestead on the Kispiox River as it is from my bungalow on the foothills of Terrace Mountain. Bob is there before the agreed upon time; I’m ten minutes late, a fact I blame on a delay at the construction site of the new roundabout.
As trucks and land yachts pull off Highways 16 and 37 and jam the pumps, I transfer my gear to Bob’s truck, which only makes sense since one of Bob’s many boats, his canoe, is tied to it, and there is no need to shuttle. The clay craft today is a canoe that we will paddle around the outflow end of the lake, only a few kilometres north of Gitanyow.
As we drive north on Highway 37, Bob tells me that he’s done some scouting on his own, measuring the highway mileage from prospective put-ins and take-outs for subsequent drifts.
It’s only about five kilometres from the lake to Gitanyow, less than that from the village to the highway turnoff, and five kilometres from there to where the logging bridge crosses the river, he tells me.
The Crown Zellerbach Bridge.
Is that what it’s called?
Yep.
We turn off the highway and drive past some of the poles that inspired Emily Carr and through Gitanyow. Other than a few kids and a few dogs, there is nobody outside. At the north end of town, a sign over a building reads Gitanyow Fisheries. We consider stopping but there doesn’t appear to be anyone there so we don’t.
Kitwancool Lake was formerly a fishy body of water. Years ago, I came across some papers extolling its riches, later compromised by siltation caused by of logging.
I tell Bob of the spring day when Doug and I made our way to the fence at the lake outflow. I tell him how amazed we were at the number of sockeye smolts that were making their way through the weir, and how surprised we were at their size.
I spread my thumb and index finger, a distance of a full 15 centimetres, to indicate their approximate size.
They were like this, I say. No kidding. A good half a foot long, they looked like eels.
I’d read that sockeye juveniles may spend up to four years in fresh water. Given their size, these creatures must have spent all of that.
I told Bob that I was so struck by those fish that the next time I was at my bench, I fashioned some articulated hooks — because no tackle purveyors sold such irons at that time — and tied some long streamer style patterns of suitable sized grizzly hackle laid over a body of spun marabou augmented with long strands of flexible mylar tinsel.
I christened the fly “The Smolt” and baptized it in the Kitsumkalum, where Dolly Varden, Bull Trout, Cutthroat Trout, and Steelhead fell for it. In fact, its allure was such that I remain convinced that those species were taking it for a seaward bound sockeye.
I have no sooner shared this piece of piscatorial history than I realize that I’ve left my fly wallet, the last leaf of which has the remaining three smolts stuck to it, in my truck. A potential opportunity squandered, but it’s too far to go back.
We find the road to the weir. There is one Gitanyow employee there when we arrive. He tells us the rest of the crew is out on the lake. We walk out on the weir. I alert Bob to a school of smolts, in this case coho, being pushed alongside the front of the weir to the pipe that will take them into a downstream box of enumeration. The river downstream of the weir looks very fishy. We watch for rises, the best indicator of smolt and fry migration. There are none.
It’s ten minutes from the weir to the spot where we launch the boat. We spend the next couple of hours gliding across the south end of the lake. There is not a single rise in all this time. There is no wind. A few aquatic insects are coming off unmolested.
We paddle down the channel leading to the outflow, dragging a couple of hairy caddis nymphs behind us. Still there no hint of piscine activity. This is kind of eerie given that the channel is a natural place for hungry trout to congregate and await all the current borne food items.
As we make our way toward Kitwanga, neither of us is so much disappointed as perplexed. Perhaps the window for the fishery we were after is a small one. We agree to try the drift from Gitanyow to the bridge, but it won’t be for a while.
To be continued…
