"THE RIVER THAT TIME FORGOT", published by Trout and Salmon

April 2005



When I was a kid, I used to rush home from school to catch a program called “The Time Tunnel”. Even as a twelve year old, I recognised the concept of a couple of dreadful old hams in roll neck sweaters ambling down the ‘tunnel’ to change history, as faintly silly. In amongst all those tangled time-travel conundrums, however, was the fascinating notion of being able to see how the world really was, way back in the far, foggy mists of time.

Flying over the spectacular coastal range that guards the Pacific coast of British Columbia, the pristine glaciers, lakes and rivers took turns to bounce the summer sun into the window of the spindly little floatplane. My pilot, John Blackwell, who owns and runs Moose Lake Lodge, pointed down at a serpentine little river snaking off into the mountains. As I craned my neck to see, I was moved to observe that, unlike many of the milky, glacially fed rivers we’d passed, this river was gin-clear. “Look a little closer” crackled John through my headphones, as he banked the plane over steeply. Peering through the plexi-glass, I suddenly caught sight of a huge seething black mass, choking the mouth of the river and stretching way back into the estuary. Before I could ask, John turned to me and, grinning from under his headset, he confirmed what I’d only dare suspect: “Ever seen so many fish?” In that moment, watching this huge seething biomass nosing innocently into the perfect, clean, clear water, I thought of those two daft characters and their Time tunnel: John’s little plane had whisked us to a time before drift nets, pollution…perhaps to a time before man first stalked the earth. We’d come to the river that time forgot.

John expertly glided the little floatplane onto the glassy surface of the sound, and as we puttered into the mouth of the river, I scrambled out onto the float, into the clean bright air, and watched as countless salmon scampered off at our approach. Faced with such an intimate little river, I rummaged past the double-handed rods I’d carefully stowed, and fished out an 8wt, single-hander from the back of the cockpit. Over the next seven hours, we worked our way up this crystal, “garden of Eden” stream, catching a ludicrous number of salmon – high-flying, mint-fresh pinks; big, ugly, brawling chums; demented, ocean-fresh sockeye; and my undoubted favourite, the savagely strong, primevally aggressive Coho, or Silver salmon. I found that a big, bright fly like the ‘Orange Popsicle’ – an uncomplicated, fluorescent marabou streamer – allowed me to track the fly through the vast shoals like a light-bulb and clearly observe each take. Not only was this ten times as exhilarating as blind fishing: it also prevented false striking as the fly dragged over the backs of the densely packed shoals and drastically reduced foul-hooking. Believe me, a 25-pound chum salmon snagged in the back is no laughing matter. I’d long since lost count of the fish we’d caught when a particularly violent Coho, a glorious, silver bullet of around 15 pounds, grabbed the fly and rushed upstream until he encountered a small waterfall. Undaunted, the fish streaked up onto the rocks and thrashed wildly on the apex of the fall in the rushing white torrent, before finally dropping back into the pool below where he performed a series of livid, cartwheeling leaps that wreaked of rage and fury. Holding this perfect silver fish in the spotless purity of the stream, I touched a time before stock ponds or hatcheries or smolt programmes; before hydro-electric damming or salmon-farming, or any of the other miserable, crippling impositions we’ve placed on most of the world’s salmon rivers. Sensing his chance, the fish twisted in my grasp and flashed back into the water, showering me with spray and breaking my reverie. I stood up, wiped the droplets from my polaroids, and caught another salmon. By the time we started the long hike back to the plane, I was shattered. When I stumbled on a slippery, moss-covered rock, John cautioned that we should keep our wits about us, in order not to bump into one of the huge grizzlies that like to employ this little stream as their summer larder. I wouldn’t have been much more surprised to bump into a couple of frisky veloceraptors in this prehistoric backwoods.

The next day, John’s little time machine flew us to a trout stream – the Blackwater – where we watched ferocious, magenta-flanked rainbows attack almost anything that bobbed over their heads. Too soon, the lowly squawfish – dark, chub-like fish that know no fear – would come flocking to see what all the fuss was about and we’d be forced to move on, bouncing down the tumultuous stream in our rubber raft and lazily tossing daft-looking, rubber-legged dry-flies into likely-looking spots. All the cerebral imitative conundrums of modern-day trout fishing seemed far, far away as the fierce little fish grabbed our offerings with innocent abandon.

On my last day at Moose Lake Lodge, we flew out to a spectacular lake, set high in the mountains that guard the mouth of the famous Dean River. Fishing a sparkling little lead-headed streamer on a sink-tip line, at the mouth of a small inlet, I caught dozens of exquisite, silvery cutthroats in the perfect, cathedral-like stillness. The huge, glassy-green lake lay impossibly flat, mirroring the leaden grey sky, and I wondered at what leviathans might lay deep down in its dark depths. On the way back, we stopped in to have a quick look at the magnificent Lower Dean. I wasn’t allowed to fish – all the rods had been sold many months before - but as I watched most of the American anglers flailing away with their wholly inadequate single-handed rods, I resolved to come back and try for one of the river’s legendary steelhead.

Bidding John farewell, I flew on to Minette Bay Lodge: Dr Howard Mills’ delightful retreat, close to the mighty Skeena, Kalum and Kitimat River systems. Howard is an expat Englishman – an utterly charming man who, with his lovely wife Ruth runs one of the most relaxed and welcoming lodges I’ve ever had the pleasure to visit.

Minette Bay has access to some great steelhead fishing, with the major runs coming in September and October, and also offers anglers the chance of hooking a mighty Chinook (or King) – the largest of all the world’s salmon species – on the fly.
I’d arrived a little late for the run of these huge fish, and despite fishing hard on the beguiling little Kitsilano River, I failed to elicit a strike. Late in the day, as my enthusiasm started to wane, a pod of three impossibly huge shapes came gliding up the pool to within ten feet of where I stood, and I realised just how massive these Chinooks are. They appeared pitch black in the milky melt-water, and, having been in the river for a fair while, these leviathans probably had other things on their mind, but that evening, Howard showed me some pictures of huge, bright silver Chinook – some very close to fifty pounds – caught fair and square on double-handed Spey rods from the beautiful streams around Kitimat.
Howard thought that perhaps there might be a few fresh Chinook (only newly arrived “Kings” are considered likely to take a fly) still running up the Kitimat River, and we resolved to fish it the next day.

My guide, an amiable local guy named Carl, drove me down to the town stretch of the river, early the following morning, and we rigged up with ultra-fast sinking lines and big, gaudy flies to fish the wide, strong currents of the Kitimat. Once again, I’d stumbled back into a time when rivers were crammed full of fish. During this long, astonishing day, Carl and I may have caught over a hundred salmon. Not little things either – most of them were big, mean chum salmon of between fifteen and twenty eight pounds– nasty, savage brutes that plough off down the river and force you to apologise to other anglers as you skid and skate past them along the shingle in pursuit.

After wrestling maybe a dozen of these grizzled, dog-toothed fiends onto the rocks, I suddenly hooked something different: an unrelenting rocket that took off down the Kitimat at an astounding speed. Blundering past Carl and numerous other anglers, I watched backing spill alarmingly from my big “Loop” reel despite its hefty drag being screwed down tight.
Abruptly, a huge black shape broke through the surface – unmistakeably a big, stale Chinook – before crashing back into the water. As I started to gain on the fish, the line suddenly went heavy. Initially the fish had felt big, but now it was impossibly violent and muscular: as I drew level with the spot where the line entered the water, a huge black shape ghosted up briefly through the water, rolled over and was gone. It took me a few brief seconds to make sense of what I had just seen: I eventually realised that my huge Chinook had just been eaten by a large seal.

The rest of the day passed in a blur of fizzing reels and countless big fish caught and returned: a group of Norwegian anglers arrived and proceeded to fish with Atlantic salmon tackle – floating lines and sparse little hair wing flies. Amazingly, they caught nothing, despite Carl and I repeatedly offering them heavy sink-tips and the loud, weighty flies we were employing. A young Belgian lad, on the other hand, allowed Carl to rig his rod up and was soon beaming from ear to ear as a twenty-pound chum took him careering off downstream in a hilarious tug of war that at one point threatened to drag him into the river. Late in the day, I hooked what was probably another big Chinook – I’ll never know as it snagged me some 150 yards downriver in what I later found out was a sunken tree.
As the sun started to dip into the west, we finally called it a day. I settled against the bumper and started to kick off my waders, reflecting on the fact that my yearlong odyssey was coming to an end. I was about to jump back down the “time tunnel” – back to London, back to put and take fishing, to stocked, pellet-fed rainbows with scruffy fins, and mobs of ugly cormorants forced inland by the lack of food out at sea. I thought about the majority of the salmon-fishing back home, where anglers lamely talk about a fish as a “bonus”. An approaching truck snapped me out of my melancholia: a local spin fisherman emerged and started unloading his kit out of the back of the station wagon. “Any good?” he asked. “Oh, we caught a ton of fish today!” beamed Carl. I laughed – I’ve heard that cliché so many times, but I almost started doing the maths.

Accommodation:

Moose Lake Lodge, built and run by John and Mary-Lou Blackwell, is a magical spot, far from the madding crowd. The absurdly prolific salmon and trout fishing is just part of the adventure of flying around the magnificent, untouched wilderness on British Columbia’s central west coast. John’s Lower Dean River Fishery is feted as one of the great steelhead waters in the world, and these fish, fresh from the sea, are notoriously hard fighting.

Moose Lake Lodge
Box 3310 Anahim Lake, BC
Phone: 001.250 742-3535
Fax: 001.250 742-3749
Email: mooslk@telus.net
Website: http://www.mooselakelodge.bc.ca

Minette Bay is a fantastic place, tucked away on a secluded stretch of shoreline on the Douglas channel, near Kitimat – Howard and Ruth are great company and I found myself spending most of my time in the kitchen, chatting away to Howard over a glass of excellent red wine and generally getting under Ruth’s feet while she prepared some of the most delicious food I’ve ever had. The photograph of a chrome-bright, forty-eight pound Chinook, taken on the fly, hanging in the hall will have you champing at the bit every morning, as you wait to be transported to the fishing by boat or helicopter. There is also a lot for the non fly-fisher: the scenery and wildlife are astonishing – whales, bears, moose, elk and sea eagles top the bill.

Dr. Howard & Mrs. Ruth Mills
Minette Bay Lodge
2255 Kitimat Village Road
Kitimat, British Columbia
V8C 2P4 Canada

Phone: 001.250.632.2907
Fax: 001.250.632.2903
E-mail: info@minettebaylodge.com
Website: http://www.minettebaylodge.com

Tackle:

For the salmon: a stout double-hander is best for the larger rivers and for the Chinook, chum and steelhead. The smaller rivers and the Coho fishing can easily be tackled with a single-handed 8-9wt. Bear in mind that Pacific salmon tend to want the fly fished deeper than their Atlantic cousins, so take along a selection of sinking lines – I rate the Guide shooting head system as by far the most versatile.
‘Popsicles’ in orange and fuscia pink, and large, egg-sucking leeches for the Coho, pinks and sockeye. The Chum seem particularly fond of Christmas decorations (see photo)!

For the trout: Take a 5 or 6 weight and lots of big, bushy attractor dries – humpies, Royal Wulffs and, in particular, the infamous Chernobyl ant. The cutthroats are suckers for big streamers – and almost anything else.




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