Report #6 (June 8th, 2014) The Upper Columbia River is seeing a lot of water now and producing well! We started guiding on the Upper Columbia River in southern B.C. at the beginning of June and will be there until early July. The Upper Columbia River has been very productive over all even though the anglers have had to work hard to locate and catch fish in the past few days. The flows on the Columbia have increased in recent days and coincidentally we did not see many hatches on the water. That said, we were still able to get into fish. Today we decided to put in on the top end of the river near the mouth of the confluence of the Kootenay River and then jetted down to fish the many back eddies of the Castlegar Run. The weather was very nice today with blue skies and temperatures reaching a balmy 75°F (24°C). It was a very calm day which was a wonderful plus for anyone casting fly lines. The freshet is really moving down through the Columbia system now as the snow melts, today the flow was 110,000 cubic feet per second (3,100 cubic meters per second). However, the Upper Columbia remains very clear. We just have to keep a keen eye out for logs, or branches flowing down the River and getting caught in the back eddies. Once in the eddies they tend to ride the spin until they get kicked out again and continue down river. The water temperature today was 53°F (11.5°C). We are always prepared to use different fishing techniques when we pack the boat for the Columbia. Today we focused on nymphing and streamer techniques to catch the big rainbows. After we launched and jetted downstream for a time, we immediately found very active fish as we worked along the bank edges and made our initial casts into the back eddies. The fishing was very good today which was a welcome change after the past few days of picky fish! Between the two anglers they caught and released 25 rainbows which made for a very productive day. The largest fish landed and released was a nice and chunky 23 inch rainbow who was not happy about our meeting! This rainbow jumped out of the water many times and made a few long getaway runs in earnest. The heads on these fish seem to look small as their bodies are big, they must be eating very well this spring. There were a number of hatches coming off the Upper Columbia today. The main ones were small caddis pupas and small midges and they came off pretty steadily throughout the day. Anticipating these hatches we tied some modified caddis pupas in advance which worked fairly well. The anglers also used Prince Nymphs, Copper Johns, Lightning Bugs and Kelly’s Super Streamer with good success. Just before we launched the boat we saw a small brown bear making its way to the River. We also saw a lot of bird life on this run including Canada geese, as well as a number of ospreys and eagles out fishing and patrolling their territories around their nests. River Round-up: All of the small rivers in the East Kootenays including the Elk, St. Mary and Bull Rivers open on June 15th. The run-off is still coming strong now, but hopefully with a gradual decline everything will be good to go by the end of June. Dry fly fishing for cutthroats is just around the corner so give some consideration to coming up to our part of the world to catch them! Tight lines, Kelly St.Mary Angler PS call us at 1-800-667-2311 to chat about conditions on the Columbia or book a trip for cutthroats come summer.
Posted on: Sun, 15 Jun 2014 06:09:25 +0000