Ever since the first time I fished the Cowichan, I've had dreams of fishing the upper reaches for those
beautiful golden brown trout. In my humble opinion they are the most pleasing to the eye, with the most
vibrant colours of all the trout. I think of making the trek over to the rock often but the reality
of a young family makes that difficult to do. After a long December with very little fishing cabin
fever had gotten the best of me so I got a hall pass from the wife and called up a buddy to see if
he would be interested in going over and spending a day drifting the upper section. I knew that
most were fishing the lower for steel but I was more interested in finding those beautiful browns.
I made arrangements with Ian Barker of The Rambling Fisherman and we met up at Skutz Falls on a chilly
friday morning. Ian is a very enthusiastic guide and although I'm sure he thought we were a bit "off"
requesting a trout focused drift of the upper he was excited to get us into fish. He and friend had
drifted the upper the day before in preperation of our trip and did exceptionally well. Our hopes
were high as we jumped into the big red drift boat.
The first couple of spots yielded one 15" bow for my buddy and nothing for me. Our drift was from
the top of the river back to Skutz (18km) so a long day was ahead with some serious trout water. I was
anxious to get to the juicy runs. Well, in my opinion he whole river is juicy. I don't think there
is a run where you can't pick out a classic trout holding spot.
Ian positions the boat in the middle of our first honey hole. A long wide section of broken water
with a side channel of slower water and lots of log and tree limbs in the water. As my polarized
glasses started to clear from my breath I realize that the slower water was completely spotted with
some very large and dark coho. In behind you can see the shadows of the drop down rainbows just waiting
for some loose eggs to drift on by. The whole days numbers are lost on me now but we netted over a
dozen rainbow each, a few coho jacks and unfortunately for me, no browns. But really how could I
be anything but totally over the moon with such a productive day. We lost as many fish as we landed
and as we progressed down the river it only got better. 3 steelhead each by the end of the drift.
They weren't big, with the largest around 4lbs but all very feisty and released with care. We both
looked at Ian several times and asked if we were still asleep and dreaming. The bites were constant
and Ian made sure we stayed on top of fish.
By around 2pm I think we only managed to cover approx. 3Kms! We had a long way to go and darkness
approaching. So no more stopping, it would be a straight drift to the falls. We fished the whole
way down and managed to catch and release a half dozen fish and a couple of steelhead making it to
pull out just as twilight was starting to darken the sky. Exhausted from a long day of casting,
hungry because we didn't stop to eat (our own fault for being late), we were all smiles with the smell
of fish all over us. If you ever get the chance to fish the Cowichan, do it and mark it off your
bucket list. You won't regret it.
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Topic: Cowichan River, January 18th 2013 (Read 1189 times)