Having not fished at all in 2009 due to lack of motivation to fish spring stillwaters and then a ruptured achilles tendon, I was just itching to hit some moving water. Usually by this time multiple trips to the T and Skagit have been done and usually a longer road trip to the Kootenays has been accomplished.
2 weekends ago I had decided that my leg had healed enough to at least try a walk and wade, preferably on a smaller piece of water. As I enjoy exploring new areas and waters almost as much as fishing, I decided to hit an indirect Fraser trib that I had visited in the past on a non-fishing trip. I knew then I could hit a more familiar piece of water on the way back. As I would be going solo, my usual flyfishing partner was was up north popping his Skeena cherry, I treated the trip as more of a scouting mission for the following weekend. As part of my scouting, I scoured through the regs to see if the creek I was intending on hitting was indeed open. After not seeing any mention of the creek and double checking witheh Rodney, I knew I was ready.
The drive up was uneventful but the obligatory stops at Timmy Ho's, McD's and a quick pee and smoke break at a bridge over a river, I finally reached my destination just under 4 hrs later.
The piece of water I was to hit first was not very big at all, but I was aware of that. I tentatively began wading the river, more focused on my leg than fishing, but that quickly changed as I totally forgot about my leg. The creek was not very wide or deep but there was very little obvious structure and riffly. Targetting the slower seams and slicks, I finally got into a bully of about 16 inches and then a nice rainbow before I reached what was to be the only pool on the creek. The pool had definite potential as it was nice and deep with the water funelling off a shelf at the head due to a nice logjam and then slowly broadening out with a nice tailout. Also there was a whack of sockeye just milling about and you could see the grey shadows of the some nice bulls hanfing around.
The creek:
The reason for targetting said creek:
Some of the results of the initial scouting trip:
Scarface:
After landing 2 rainbows and 13 bulls and losing a bunch more, I headed off to Trib 2 but after such a successful scouting trip on my initial trip of the year, I found that I was not very motivated and more than a bit tired. I did fish for a bit but found that the fishing was slow and was not able to land any fish.
Last weekend, I headed up again but this time with Chrome_Mykiss (CM). As usual, when fishing with CM, you start your drive up when its dark and your drive back when its dark.
After we reached our destination, I am disapointed to see that the water has risen and had a very slight bit of colour to it. I also could tell that CM seemed a bit skeptical when we did not get into any fish after the first 20 mins or so. The slower seams and slicks that were so evident a week ago were all gone due to the higher water and it seemed that the fish had either moved to different holding areas or had dropped back down. But I was not too worried as I knew we were approaching the only pool on the creek. In the meantime CM had managed to land a smaller bull.
CM playing first fish:
After reaching the pool, things thankfully picked up we both landed a couple of fish and lost a few more.
CM at pool:
After exhausting the pool, we quickly moved our way to the mouth of the creek and were quickly into some nice fish:
Altogether we probably lost as many fish as we landed.
Checking the time we realized that we need to head to Trib 2 if we wanted to have time to fish. 30 mins later we were at Trib 2 and although the fishing was not as fast and furious we were able each land some decent fish.
Trib 2
Untangling the leader from a branch and then still landing the fish:
Rainbow:
Fall is upon us and the fishing will only get better.
Shane
Author
Topic: Fraser River tributaries, September 13th & 20th 2009 (Read 2116 times)