Deciding to take a break from the Fraser River, I convinced Mrs. Randog to join me for a couple days of fly-fishing the gorgeous waters of the Thompson River. So we loaded up the Suburban and hooked up the jet boat and headed for the cactus riddled arid desert of B.C.’s interior
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After several great reports of large rainbows being taken on the dry fly, I lead footed the Suburban up through the Fraser Canyon to our launch site at Juniper Beach. The boat was in the water and camp was set up in no time flat
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We fired up the jet boat and navigated up river about 3kM.and beached the boat at the tail of a likely piece of water. I strung up Mrs. Randog’s fly rod first and sent her on her way to the head of the run. While rigging up my fly rod I overhear Mrs. Randog laughing, I look up to see her fighting the first of many rainbows. Wow first cast!
It looked like we were off to a good start. After catching and missing several rainbows from that first run we decided to head down river and try a new spot. I checked the fuel gauge in the boat only to find it sitting on EMPTY! (
Note to self; always check fuel level BEFORE launching) so it was back to the launch, back on the trailer and off to the gas station ARGH! We returned and headed down stream through some rapids for a look at some tempting dry fly water. The boat was beached and with fly rods in hand we connected with a few larger rainbows in the 18”-20” range but we were having troubles making the fish stick on the Stimulator dry flies.
Day two started out early, as we wanted to beat the forecasted temperatures of 36 deg. F. (
Note to self; wear sunscreen or suffer the wrath of Lobster Man) We flashed up the jet boat and took off way down river passing another set of anglers and headed for some water that we scouted out the night before behind an old overgrown orchard
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After beaching the boat Mrs. Randog spied a snake lying out on the rocks and decided to pick it up for a photo
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After the pics. We returned Mr. Snake to his spot to sun himself. I could see that there had been a recent stone fly hatch
so I decided to opt. For a large stone fly nymph and indicator as Mrs. Randog stayed with the dry flies. After fishing the nymph through the run a few times and coming up empty-handed while Mrs. Randog connected with a few nice rainbows I decided to switch back to the dry fly and the strikes quickly followed
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In conclusion, the dry fly action was unbelievable; it was like fishing in the middle of an old Western film. The smell of wild chives and sagebrush is unbelievable. I’ll be heading back up to fish the Spences bridge area in the near future to sample the fantastic dry fly action that the Thompson River has to offer.
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Topic: ~~~Thompson River Dry Fly Action~~~ (Read 4814 times)