Les
>From: "Ryan Davey" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>Subject: RE: Elk River Valley Novel (or the punishment and rewards of exploring new water)
>Date: Wed, 30 Jul 2003 02:14:50 -0700
>
>Andy,
>
>EXCELLENT report! One of the best I've read on a long time, thanks for
>taking the time to write it! I'm certainly interested in the access points
>that you talked about as I'll hopefully be heading out that way during the
>September/October timeframe...
>
>Ryan Davey
>www.worldanglr.com
>www.patagonia-expedition.org
>
>May your trails be crooked, winding, lonesome, dangerous, leading to the
>most amazing view. May your mountains rise into and above the clouds.
>
>- Edward Abbey
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Andy Towell
>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
>
>
