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[bigsnag]

5% out of 7,500 is still a lot of people.  Glad you are one of them...or may be not.
Why are you so sensitive btw, waders still leaking, hooks too dull to stick?

[Phronesis]

Thanks for the graph...
95% of the people here probably only worry about whether if their fishing holes got washed out, unfortunately.

Why so much hate towards people?
I think its the other way round, 98% people are good hearted and really care about climate/nature/wildlife more than their fishing holes.

[RalphH]

I worry about my favorite fishing spots too! Will they have disappeared? Is everything now filled in? Do I have to look for new places to fish? There are places I fished for 30+ years, beautiful glides and tail outs where winter time cutthroat sipped emergers from the surface. They are gone & replaced with deep fast water. So far I haven't found anything comparable.

[clarki]

I feel ya, Ralph. I was at my favourite cutthroat haunt on Saturday, the 13th. On the drive home is when the skies opened up. If I knew then what I know now, I may have stayed a bit longer. Honestly, I'm a little afraid to go back to see what I might see.

Although I didn't have 30 years there like your spots, I knew it like the back of my hand.  Yes there's the challenge of learning it all over again, adapting and exploring, but sometimes you just want the comfort of a familiar old friend.

[iblly]

I left cultus lake the Sunday afternoon before things went for a real s#!t, just before the main road into cultus washed out. In 30 plus years fishing the vedder I have never seen so much water running down that river as that day. I can’t imagine what the lower river looks like now. A lot of people’s favourite fishing spots will be gone. Mid to lower always changes some every year and I always enjoyed looking for new steelhead water every winter but I think not this year.  My daughter and I will instead be looking to help out the community we call home for six months of every year. People have lost a lot out there but that doesn’t mean it’s selfish or bad to reflect on favourite fishing spots lost.

[clarki]

ibilly, a couple of years I remember looking at what happened when Watt Creek flooded due to an atmospheric river event in Feb 2020. The channel that was cut and the alluvial fan that it deposited in the forest was amazing...at the time. But I bet that pales in comparison what happened last week. Can you describe what happened?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_jjmFO5kn2c
The amount of woody debris is staggering

[bigsnag]

Why so much hate towards people?
I think its the other way round, 98% people are good hearted and really care about climate/nature/wildlife more than their fishing holes.

No hatred intended. Just facts of life. Nothing wrong for being honest.  My apologies to all if it came across that way.

[wildmanyeah]

They said on the radio this morning that highway 8 may not be repairable. That the route is no longer viable.

[iblly]

Clarki, as I said we left just before it got super ugly but it had been raining hard all night and it was blowing like crazy. We were watching the trees and thinking it’s time to go ! Decided to avoid the highway and take the backroads through all the farmland to get home to Richmond. Even at that time all the big ditches were not only full but were flowing like fast moving creeks. We are part timers at cultus, just keep our trailer there April to September but we have many friends who live there full time and some who have cabins there. I have gotten many pictures and videos from our friends who live there. Some frightening stuff. The video link you posted is the beach in front of the place we park our trailer. Can’t imagine what that will look like in the spring when and if we are allowed to return. Have a friend at lindell beach who lives between watt creek and frosst creek and his house survived while many of his neighbours places were not so lucky. I also saw the previous path of destruction at watt creek that you mentioned. Scary. I’m sure it looks much worse now. Sad.

[iblly]

I watched footage of highway 8 taken from a helicopter and I can’t see how it could be repaired but you never know I guess.

[RalphH]

Since our lives are relatively, so short, we tend to think our common landscape features change little over time. Who would think for example, that the Nooksack River was once a tributary of the Fraser river, or that 10,000 or so years ago almost none of our favorite fishing spots in the Valley and LM existed. They would have been covered by hundreds of feet of seawater. The valley up to Hope was a saltwater sound. Both Harrison and Pitt lakes were not lakes but saltwater inlets of the Salish Sea.

There are 3 spots on the Fraser I used to fish for cutthroat in the winter and spring which basically disappeared, became unfishable, mostly due not to floods, but to flood remediation. By gravel mining and riprap structures that both changed the river course and left them all but inaccessible. These days the riprap is made using boulders that are the size of small cars. A couple of years ago on my return to one place I found a sloped field of riprap about 40 yards wide, up to six feet high with chasms as deep and if I slipped, wide enough to swallow my leg.  It terminated in deep water where once there was a gravel beach.

I went back the next year and most of the gaps between the riprap were filled with silt and a muddy beach skirted the edge. In one season of flooding the river had all but covered that riprap.
 

[RalphH]

They said on the radio this morning that highway 8 may not be repairable. That the route is no longer viable.

https://globalnews.ca/news/8396216/b-c-floods-highway-8-closure-damage/

[iblly]

Driven that road more times than I could possibly count. Never again by the sounds of it.

[CohoJake]

Since our lives are relatively, so short, we tend to think our common landscape features change little over time. Who would think for example, that the Nooksack River was once a tributary of the Fraser river, or that 10,000 or so years ago almost none of our favorite fishing spots in the Valley and LM existed. They would have been covered by hundreds of feet of seawater. The valley up to Hope was a saltwater sound. Both Harrison and Pitt lakes were not lakes but saltwater inlets of the Salish Sea.

Yes, not only the Nooksack, but also the Upper Skagit used to flow into the Fraser. I'm fascinated by the places where these rivers intersect in high water. The Nooksack and Johnson Creek, which flows into the Sumas River, are only separated by low farm land, so it isn't hard for them to combine. Same for the South Fork of the Nooksack and the Samish River, which flow in opposite directions in the same valley. I wonder what hopping points there are like this with BC rivers. It also reminds me of the special places in Yellowstone National Park where Snake River tributaries can flow either way over the continental divide, meaning you have cutthroat that are actually east of the Rocky Mountains. I have also thought that if the Chilliwack native spring chinook really are extirpated, the North Fork Nooksack stock may be genetically similar enough to re-establish that run, since these rivers have meandered and connected to a certain degree over recent geologic time.

[wildmanyeah]

This will eventually be okay if the gravel stays in place but i'm sure were going to see a big push to mine it in the name of flood protection.

the other thing will be the 2022 freshet, there is a huge amount of mud and trees sitting at the sides of banks right now waiting for another high water event.