An(other) East Kootenay stream, September 2022

 In early August, my son mentioned that he and two buddies were returning to the Elk River valley for their annual elk hunt. I threw out a "Hey, can I tag along and fish while you guys hunt?", half expecting that three mid to late twenties young men would not want a dumb old dad in the tent with them for a week. Turns out I was wrong!

After we set up the wall tent and stove, felled a dead tree and chopped enough firewood for the week, I joined the hunters for a evening scouting trip as we glassed the slopes for game. What we saw amazed me. In the span of an hour, after glassing both sides of the valley, we saw a band of mountain goat, several deer and elk, a sow grizzly and two cubs, a solitary boar grizzly , and a black bear. I've never seen a grizzly in the wild (never mind four) nor have I seen a mountain goat (never mind a band). It was like I was watching a Nat Geo special and I was stunned at the vast diversity of wildlife in just the couple of slopes that we glassed. Needless to say, the hunters were a little excited and ready to hit the slopes the next morning.

Oh yeah, the grizzlies... I would be fishing solo the next week and even though I would be carrying bear spray on my hip (cue the joke about grizzly scat smelling like pepper), I was glad to see so many bears way up in the alpine. Still...to say that I was a little anxious to be fishing in the autumn woods by myself for a week would an understatement. I don't have a comfort level in these woods yet, and I was a lot anxious! 

The week fell into a nice routine. The hunters would get up well before dawn, start a fire in the stove while they geared up and  I would sleep in, enjoying a warm tent after overnight temps had dipped to well below zero. After a leisurely breakfast and coffee, I would read and journal and hit the water at the gentlemanly hour of noon'ish and return to camp in the early evening to start supper for the group.  While supper was being prepared we would swap stories. The hunters would regale me with tales of game seen, stalks blown, elk called (with video recorded through spotting scopes), mountains scaled and death marches through some unforgiving terrain. They were equally interested in my stories and pictures of fish caught or lost. It was nice, like we were a family debriefing about the events of the day. 😉  Although I was called a hippie flyfisher because of my catch and release.

Over the five days that I fished, I explored a different section of river each day and got a feel for the area. Generally I tried to fish sections of river that meandered across a floodplain and avoided sections that required trails through the brush. Maybe the grizzlies were still in the alpine but I liked that the openness of the floodplain meant that sightlines were good and it less likely that a bear or I would surprised each other. Still " Yo, bear" became a frequent part of my vocabulary and I would often check that my spray was accessible.

I looked forward to trying out my new nymphing rod; the first one I've owned. I know that westslope cutthroat are God's gift to dry fly fisherman, but I hadn't had the opportunity to fish with the rod yet and anticipated practicing with it in moving water for the first time. Except Mr. OCD, who makes excessive packing lists, forgot to add sighter/indicator tippet to his packing list. Doh! So I spent my first day on the water fishing with an indicator. It was kind of like hitching a purebred race horse to a cart, but it worked OK and I got play with the new rod for a day. This section of river was narrower and deeper as it flowed through some exposed and lifted rock strata. Wading was a challenge and on my first day I still wasn't ready for a lot of solo bushwacking, so I stuck with the water that I could access by wading. Still I caught a respectable number of fish on nymphs, including these couple nice ones 

that were caught in this pool.

I chuckled to myself several times today as I recalled a quote from a podcast where Davey Wotton was the guest: "The ruination of flyfishing is indicators and beadhead flies" 😀

Found this interesting rock today.  It appears to have been carved by humans, but when and for what purpose, I don't know.

It can be a harsh environment up here.

At day's end, the hunters returned with a story and pictures about something that they found up on the mountain. About half way up the approx 3000 ft slope, they found this cave that appeared to be a den.

There were leaves (fresh, green leaves) on the floor of the den but also placed into the side of the den in the rocks. The branches in the vicinity of then den were not stripped so it was presumed that the leaves came from elsewhere. In the entrance to the den was what appeared to be a feces that was long and  cylindrical in shape; shaped human-like and not the pile of bear shit that one usually sees.

The hunters were intrigued, and understandably a little freaked out. What would have the manual dexterity to place those leaves and what was the origin of that feces? Needless to say, the hunters didn't explore the den thoroughly. Can't say I blame them!

I've been known to be a little bit of a believer in Sasquatch; I'm not devout, more like an agnostic. Was this just the den of a bear, or something else?

Back to fishing... As I walked into the second stretch of water that I fished, I came across this interesting rock. 

It appeared that the brown spot in the middle was a plug of ferrous metal. I scratched it with the tip of knife, but couldn't confirm. Interesting... Again, man-made, perhaps?

Speaking of OCD, did I lock the truck? I think so...Maybe...Not sure. So I began the long trudge and wade to get close so I could see the lights wink when I pressed the fob. Jeesh!

I returned to the river and came across a log jam that sets westslope angler hearts all aflutter. 

I casted an elk hair caddis, then a yellow stimulator, low in the pool and tight to shore, worked my way upstream and closer to the log jam as I went and led hooked fish down to the tailout so as to not spook the pool. I caught smaller fish in lower in the pool and this was the biggest fish from the head.   

Made me wonder...do the bigger cutthroat  station in the more desirable, deeper water at the head where they have security and first crack at the food drifting by, and the smaller fish are relegated elsewhere? Seems plausible. I don't think I've had that observation before. 

As I started to work my way into the head of the pool, the forecasted storm began to blow in with cold wind and rain mixed with some snow. I'm not entirely a fair weather fisherman, but the week was young and I knew I could come back later, so I strung my rod and started back for the truck, taking a slight detour to check out what was around the downstream corner.  The storm abated during the trek back, so I decided to stick around in the area, explored upstream and landed a few additional fish. 

The next day I hit the road in the truck and tried to find a section of river that one of the hunters had seen from far above in the alpine the day before. I love having eyes in the sky! He described a section of river, with lots of log jams, that ran fairly close to the road. I drove a distance and found what I thought he had described. It looked as promising as he said, which was confirmed by the slight angler trail heading down the slope.  

I fished dries (primarily a parachute Adams) on the upstream leg and nymphs on the downstream return.

This fish

hit in the slow water just above the submerged log. It was a little tricky keeping him out of the woody debris just below!

Further upstream, this fish

Was rising just below this fallen tree.

This broad sweeping pool stymied me. It had to hold fish but nothing I tried even produced a sniff.

I was tough to get a good dry fly drift with such a big eddy in front of me and even my most productive  nymph produced nothing. Upstream, the river left the floodplain and disappeared between some heavily forested banks and I was quite willing to remain on the floodplain, thank you very much. I turned around around at this point to head back downstream, nymphing as I went.

The first water I nymphed was this piece of deep heavy water just beyond the shallow riffle (this is the upstream edge of the same tree in the earlier picture). I surmised fish might be sitting in this water, along the bottom where it was slower. In the first couple of drifts, I hooked the biggest fish of the day, if not the trip. Perhaps the current was playing tricks on me, but the fish felt and looked sizeable. Alas, it came unbuttoned and further drifts produce no interest. 

Just downstream was a nice glide. It fished it with dries on the way up with no interest, but it looked too good to not run a nymph through.

Caught my first Elk River mountain whitefish,

 

and then I caught four more. Five nearly identical whitefish from the same small glide.

One of the whitefish was quite persistent!  During the drift, the indicator bobbed so I set the hook, missed the fish, and the rig flew over my shoulder. I quickly flicked if out again and the same thing happened: a bob, set the hook, miss the fish and flick it out again. This went on three more times before I hooked him on the fifth drift.

I haven't caught many mountain whitefish, but I like how their skin is rough and textured; quite different from the smooth skin of a trout.

I caught more trout and white fish on the way down, and arrived back at the woody debris where I started my day

This time I dangled the nymph under the indicator in the eddy below the submerged log and just let it hang there. Kind of like what I used to do with roe for coho in the Fraser Valley. The indicator dipped four times but couldn't connect and missed them all.  

At some point during the day I broke off and when I reached for more 5x tippet I discovered that I had a three inch piece remaining on the spool...and I didn't have a second spool with me, or back at camp. Note to self: on multi day trips like this where you are a long ways from the nearest flyshop, always carry duplicates! I made do for the rest of the trip with 6x, and surprisingly enough I don't think I broke off any fish on the 6x.  The bushes on errant back casts weren't quite so forgiving though!

Back at camp, I learned from the hunters that they had ridden their bikes up a non-motorized road, left them, and continued the rest of the way on foot.  Later that day, they hiked back to their bikes to find two of them missing.  Total dick move by fellow hunters. In the backcountry you hope to count on the integrity of like-minded individuals. Apparently you can't.

Let me digress into a little rant.  I was disappointed with the behaviour of some the other hunters I/we encountered. Contrary to this meme, we ran across some idiots. Like the guys that stole the bikes, or the road hunters' discarded beverage containers on the side of the road, or the gut pile left completely blocking the the upbound lane of the FSR, complete with a pair of black nitrile gloves. Disappointed, and saddened...

This endeth the rant.

The following day I explored a rough two tire track that ducked down from the main road, which is exactly what an angler does when they see a track that runs in the direction of the river! On this stretch of river, I found runs, pools and a lovely big log jam. The perfect place to wander and wade wet on a sunny afternoon. 

The log jam was big and delicious. I fished it strategically with dries and was able to get nice drifts tight to it. I caught a number of  fish that were precocious young teenagers. One of them had a missing gill plate but the fish squirted out of my net as I tried to get  a picture.

I worked my way upstream, getting as far as this piece of structure. There was a nice fish rising in the pocket which, in the picture below, is between my shadow and my rod.

I made my approach from downstream. Given the bend in the river, my first two upstream casts were directly over him and then drifted back toward him. He ignored both; and rightly so! "This is dumb" I thought. So I moved and adjusted my approach so my casts were quartering. First cast I had him. He was a stout fish that took me a distance downstream to land.

I worked this log jam on the way up with dries. 

There was no interest so I worked it with a nymph on the way back down and got a couple, including this one.

I returned to the big, delicious log jam to work it over with nymphs. Caught a number more fish, but none that were of any bigger size that I caught with dries earlier. I thought some bigger fish might be tucked under the heavy water at the top end, but not the case.

I nymphed some deeper runs at the end of the day. One run that had a deeper section at the confluence of two braids was especially productive.

Found some neat fossilized rocks today. This one was just sitting face up on the shore.

But this one is the coolest. It was submerged in the river and has a number of what appear to be fossils all over its' surface. I haven't been able to identify them yet. If you know, please let me know.

And then I had a sick day. 😒  Cough, conjested, feeling a little weak. Didn't feel up to river walking and wading so I had a quiet day around camp.

My last day on the river I went back to the section where my day was cut short due to the storm. I wanted to work the log jam again and then the downstream waters. As I suited up at the truck I realized that I had left both wading belts back at camp. That was a bummer as I had been carrying my knife, bear spray and wading staff on my belt. I rifled through the truck and re-purposed a tie down strap as a belt. A little ghetto, but workable!

At the log jam, I followed the same strategy as before: working my way up and landing fish down low. A lot of fish were rising in the 'V' in centre of the picture. As I got closer I could see that the current was running through that spot so obviously it was funneling the feed through there. I caught a lot of fish here, and a number by drifting through their feed lane in the 'V'

This was one of one the biggest fish. Lots of fish, but nothing huge that I could tease out, so I pushed on downstream.

Came across this pool and made a two or three casts with no takes. Then I saw a fish rise in the slight foam line, just this side of the heavy water. 

First cast into that line and I hooked onto this nice one. I found it interesting that this was a bright fish.  The other fish this size in this stretch of river, or even in other stretches, were showing their spawning colours. Interesting...

This fish was also a reminder to slow down, to watch and observe. I saw him rise after I started casting, and with luck, those casts didn't put him down.

Immediately above was this deep pool. I ran a dry through it with no takes so switched to a nymph to see what might be laying down deep. 

I hooked a fish that at first felt like a decent size cutthroat. Then it began to run and pulled a significant amount of drag; very unlike a cutthroat. "My goodness", I thought, "Do I have a monster cutthroat on, or maybe a bull trout". Turns out it was sorta both...

As I got the cutthroat out of the deep water, I could see that there was a sizeable bull trout shadowing it. No wonder the trout ran so hard! Sadly no picture of the bull; it was only in view for a a few moments before it skulked back to the depths.

I landed this cutthroat in the downstream pool, hopefully to give it chance to recover before it had to share the water with the bull again. A good size trout too; no wonder bull trout get so big if this is size of their meal portions.

That was a cool experience. It's not an uncommon experience for other E. Kootenay or Skagit River anglers but it was a first for me and my first time getting a glimpse of the region's bull trout.

Was this target practice or was someone trying to create a hybrid frying pan/colander?

I walked down the right bank of the river and came across this tangle of logs on the bank with some current running alongside. It looked promising, so I drifted a nymph from above and hooked a good fish when the indicator was a distance downstream and had almost disappeared from sight behind the logs.

It was a challenge to landed the fish on 6x tippet when he was so far downstream and there was a lot of wood between us, but with some patience I landed this bronze beauty.

I crossed over the river to approach the water from the left bank and this is what I couldn't see from above on the opposite bank. (The tangle of logs that I was fishing from is at the far right of the picture) A long deep run with lots of structure along the bank.

I kept my nymph on and worked the run, hooking three fish and landing two very nice ones.

But this where my lack of experience as a fly fisher comes in. In the air was a cloud of mayflies. I couldn't ID them but I've been told they were likely BWOs. In fact, when I've been been fishing this late in the day over the past week, I've seen similar clouds of mayflies. The hatch had happened (or was happening) but it appeared that the fish weren't feeding on adults on the surface. I wasn't sure if I could capitalize on the hatch, or even how to.

So I decided to rest the water, fish downstream, then come back up to this run and drift a parachute Adams. I caught a big fish below, then returned after about 20 minutes to this run and ran an Adams through, starting from the bottom of the run. I only caught one fish; this nice one.

After I worked the dry through the water, I considered trying another dry fly pattern, perhaps a smaller size BWO imitation, but I remember other anglers writing that swinging a soft hackle fly at a time like this to imitate an emerger can be productive. I've only clumsily tied a couple of soft hackle flies so I tied on a commercially tied pattern, and for the first time in my fly fishing career, tried to swing a soft hackle. I worked the run from top to bottom with no hits. This was my third time working the run so no doubt the fish were good and tired of me, but also no doubt, I had very poor  swinging technique. In the end, I hooked five and landed four nice fish out of this run. I was pleased with that.

I figured it was time to make my way back to the truck so I could be back to camp in time to start supper for the hunters, but I paused at the log jam that I started off at to try a little experiment.

I didn't care about stealth at this point, so I stood on the bank at the head of the pool, almost directly across from the 'v" that I wrote about earlier. I tied on a weighted nymph with no indicator and experimented with tight line nymphing. As I didn't have any sighter/indicator tippet, I just watched  for any movement in the line and caught five smallish trout. Interesting...that works too. Much easier to pinpoint cast without an indicator. Might come in handy sometime in certain situations. And with that, I strung my rod and left the river for the last time.

This was a marvellous experience. I explored a different section of river each day and each day I added to my knowledge of the region.  I'm still relatively new to stream fly fishing and my skill in identifying and capitalizing on hatches is developing slowly, but due to the generous spirit of westslope cutthroat I caught more fish than I deserved. Such a beautiful fish that inhabits irresistible waters among majestic Rocky Mountain peaks. What a gift to have been given by the three hunters to tag along on their trip. Thanks boys!