Great Report Andy. Thanks! Sounds like you had quite an adventure. The most memorable trips seem to be the ones that dont go perfectly.
Brenden I would love to see some pics of the area when available. -----Original Message----- From: Andy Towell [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, July 29, 2003 10:00 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Elk River Valley Novel (or the punishment and rewards of exploring new water) Here is a not so brief report on a nine day sojourn to the Elk River Valley in SE BC. In general - lovely, mountain flanked valley, HOT weather, and miles of undisturbed water if you are willing to get off the beaten track with adequate numbers of fat, happy Cutthroat and some Bull Trout thrown in for good measure. We left Seattle Saturday morning for the 11 hour drive via Spokane - Sand Point - Bonners Ferry - Libby to Fernie, where we stayed for the week at the Snow Valley Motel (yes that's a plug) which thankfully had an air conditioning unit in the Kitchenette suites. On Sunday morning we awoke to clear, blue skies (repeat weather report for every day until Friday, when the valley was socked in with smoke...), loaded up the Pathfinder and headed up into the surrounding mountains. The Elk River Valley is a broad, flat valley, semi-settled, surrounded by rocky peaks and is a gorgeous place to just sightsee. The tributary was mostly bounded by canyon and was touched by road in only two places, with a number of closed roads and old grades scattered along a canyon providing additional access. Unfortunately the river was "crowded" with all seven access spots holding one or more vehicles (the parked vehicles were how we identified most of the access points, so maybe the "crowds" were not a bad thing.) We finally settled on an access point holding only one truck - a guide with two clients. We took off downstream, skipping the first 1.5 miles or so of water so the guide would not harbor any ill-feelings for WA Flyfishers. The river held 14-18" FAT cutthroat and a surprisingly large population of Bull Trout (4lb - ?). We fished for the cutt's with smaller mayfly patterns (PMD cripples and Parachute Adam's) and while the fishing was not red hot, pulled a few fish up out of each hole. For the Bull trout we threw 6" double bunnies on T200's. Unfortunately, in our effort to stay on the guides good side - we had walked past 6 plus holes and some promising slicks to reach a section of the river that held little good holding water- so the fishing spots were few and far between. We hiked down river for an additional 1-2 miles before turning back (GPS died, so distances are based on depth of blisters and rashes from chaffing.) Upon reaching our starting point we ran in to the guide/clients just reaching the spot where we had started fishing, so should have accrued some good karma from the effort to leave them water. As mentioned earlier - it was sunny and hot and covering distances in the canyon was a lot of work - little did we know that this was going to be nothing compared to our next trip to this tributary. The second day was dedicated to floating the Elk, which proved more difficult than anticipated, because no one wanted to tell us where the launches were. We knew where one takeout was (Morrissey Road), so with very directed questions, finally got someone at the Elk River Outfitters to draw a map to the Fernie launch, the launch on the upstream side. The river has a fantastic reputation for dry fly fishing, but the extended hot, dry weather was taking a toll. We managed to get fish up, but not nearly as many as we had expected. For the heat of the day (it was 34-37 C each day) the shallow inside edges of the holes held fish that would rise to small dries (same patterns as before), but in the mornings it was tough to get anything up. Later in the afternoons we began to pull fish up out of deeper water (outside edges of banks, slots, mid-runs) with bigger attractors (rubber leg stimulators mostly.) Unfortunately this trend (weather and fishing) held through the week. The action was moderate, with the fish mostly 14-16" and healthy, but not as fat or long as in the tribs. Hanging around the launch at the end of the day, most people (Guides, clients, other non-revenue producing free loaders such as ourselves [paraphrasing the description given by the Kootenay Angler Shop for anglers that did not live in Fernie but had the nerve to float without hiring a local guide,] all commented that fishing was slower/tougher than was to be expected.) The third day (Tuesday) we decided we had better find some other floats and took off upstream without the boat - an out-of-date book on the area helped us locate three additional launches - although not in location's that opened up all of the potential one-day drifts. After scouting for launches we headed way upstream - 55k up a forestry road roughly paralleling the upper Elk. Unfortunately the river was only touched by this road in one location - and there the river was raging and the banks not conducive to covering distances. Heading back downstream we kept following cart tracks and foot trails in to the woods until finding one that reached the river with only a 1/4 mile hike across some wooded bottom land. To further describe the river here - in 1995 there was a huge flood and basically anyplace that was not bounded by rock, got hammered, so much of the river bank was now log jams, big wide gravel flats, and recovering alder thickets. Upon wetting a line we had several hours of entertaining fishing for 8-14" cutt's that were perfectly willing to turn and chase dragging/skating/water skiing stimulators down the runs/holes as long as the fly initially passed through a feeding lane. We starting to run out of slower (relative description) water and were making our way back to the trail, when we ran across some relatively fresh 8" grizzly tracks - now please picture the 6-7' tall alder thickets, the piles of logs on and near the banks of the river, and water moving fast enough that crossing the river could only be accomplished at every third tailout or thereabout. Add in the heat, the long day, expensive camera and fishing gear and we had an interesting dilemma. Eventually (after much singing of show tunes) we crashed through several hundred yards of alder thicket on a deer trail to return to our starting point. Thankfully we found no further direct or indirect evidence of the griz. On the fourth day we decided to get tricky, get up early, and do a double float so that we could stay ahead of the guides for the first half of the day and be well behind them for the second (aren't we clever...) We launched at Garret Ready Mix and headed downstream just as the first guides were arriving at the launch. For the morning I had great success throwing sculpins on the T200 (sacrilege, but it was that or nymph and I much prefer streamer fishing to nymphing), at one point producing 4 fish in 5 casts (5 in 10 for that particular stretch of water.) The next hole produced 4 fish on small dries, but then we started to boondog more to cover some ground. We again got fewer fish up than we were expecting. By mid-afternoon the wind was howling upstream (as luck would have it, this also coincided with the location of the next launch at Hosmer, but the truck and trailer were downstream at Fernie.) As we rounded the bend we saw the first of four guide boats that were now immediately proceeding us, as it turns out that there are a least two smaller launches downstream of Garret Ready Mix that permit those in the know to do a shorter version of the double drift option. We ended up doing little effective fishing in the latter half of the afternoon, as we hopped around the guide boats, fought the wind, and generally ran out of gas and will in the afternoon heat. Thursday we returned to the tributary stopping at the first access point - a gated road that had 5 vehicles parked at it on Sunday. Hoofing our way down the road for about 2 miles brought us to a blown out flood plain with little good holding water. We headed downstream another 1/2 mile or so before reaching a slide, below which the river was cement gray. Hoping that the silt would settle out, we continued to proceed downstream. Unfortunately, little settling was occurring, and nothing was willing to rise through the muck, nor hammer streamers, so we turned around and hiked back to our initial access point and proceeded to head upstream. We eventually cleared the flood plain and got back in to canyon water and proceeded to start hooking cutts and bulls. The plan in my eyes was to continue upstream until we found the trail from another access point, out to the road, and hike back to the Pathfinder via the road. After covering several miles upstream, we ran in to another angler (and the first evidence of any recent human contact with the river.) His backpack nicely marked the location of a scramble trail heading straight up and out of the canyon. (Did I mention the hot, sunny weather, the two rods, and the camera equipment that we were each carrying?) Given the long hike and all of the equipment, we underpacked the water, and by this time my friend (who had taken along half of the liquid that I did), was near exhaustion and was beginning to show clinical signs of heat stroke. Thankfully, the fisherman that we had just run in to was also hiking out, and after we caught up to him at the trailhead, we were able to arrange a ride back to our vehicle. The driving distance between our "entrance" and "exit" locations was over 4 miles and I am quite sure that I would have been hiking it alone (in my wet socks and corked wading boots) as my friend was now shivering and nauseous. (Note to self - get to REI and pick up a water filter that fits nicely in my vest to add to the rest of my emergency equipment [matches, TP, first aid kit, leatherman, compass, whistle, flashlight.]) In spite of the previous days death march we returned again (hooking fat cutthroat on dries and large bulls on streamers in a gorgeous wilderness setting will do that to you.) We returned to the 42 km access point where we had skipped all of the gorgeous water in deference to the guide. Thankfully, no one else was there that morning, so we were able to fish hard from start to finish, for both the Bulls and Cutts, this time covering a more reasonable total distance with a more concentrated collection of holding water than the previous two forays. On Saturday we floated the Elk again, this time from Garret to Hosmer, getting on the river about 9 (most guides were starting at 10.) We had some cloud cover, and some PMD's were in evidence and for about the first two hours we began to hit fish in pockets, glides, runs - pretty much everywhere that we had been expecting to find them earlier in the week. Unfortunately, by noon the clouds had burned off, and the fishing returned to "normal." By mid-afternoon the wind had started up and it was evident that this trip was not going to include one of those magical days, where everything comes together. My head is now swimming with scenes of sulking Bull Trout in tailouts, Cutthroat rising from the rocky bottoms of canyon pools; refusals and takes; twisting Cutts and slashing Bull's; hopefully enough so to get me through whats proving to be a viscous travel schedule for work with my sanity intact. All in all it was a good vacation -I would guess that between the two of us we had 20-30 fish up (not necessarily hooked) each day on the tributary, with 30-50 up per day on the main stem (plus streamer fish.) We hooked at least three Bull Trout each day on the trib, with 0, 3, and 1 landed (4, 4, 5, and 7 lbs.) The largest Cutt hooked was 20+, largest to hand 18+", largest Bull Trout hooked 10-12 lbs. The Elk Valley was gorgeous, the town of Fernie a nice place to spend a week. The main stem river was seeing a lot of traffic and I would guess that the fish per mile counts and insect biomass were not as great as the Bitterroot or Rock Creek, but I expect that I will return, hoping that I can catch it when its "on", with some now familiar haunts to return to and a countless abundance of water yet left to explore. I will try and get some frame-captures off the DV and edit down some of the digital photos to illustrate the trip. If anyone is headed that direction and wants help on finding access points, please let me know, as if our experience was typical, you are unlikely to get a lot of help on the those points from the local fly shops/guides without spending a significant chunk of change. Tight lines, Andy
