This morning, we woke up at 5:15 to start our hike early. Before we began our hike, I suggested that we fish the pool next to the access (just so we can miss some of the wildlife that may still be active near the trail…especially any sow with cubs…or any mountain lions LOL).
I saw a couple of rises in the tail end of the riffle where it dumps into the pool. After 2 misses on the #16 Griffith’s Gnat, I finally hooked the fish on the third try. Arctic grayling!
Yes! Mission accomplished!
We got 2 grayling each at this deep pool. My second grayling was caught on…#16 Caddis! Any surprises? LOL
So after our little morning fun, we decided to hike to the waterfall in search for bull trout. On our 1 hour hike, we made a couple of stops for photo-ops.
And our grayling heaven on earth!
Kazu started the action with a 12” mountain whitefish.
A while later, I hooked into a nice grayling. This is possibly my favourite grayling shot.
Another few fish later, we had a nice surprise, a little rainbow (Hey…that was not in the guide book!)
But I’m still missing a bull trout. Kazu had one following early in the morning. But after 3 hours of fishing, we’re still looking for the first of the day. Finally, I went to fish closer to the deep wall on one side of the fall. After another nice grayling and mountain whitefish, I hooked into my bull trout!!!
What a beautiful species! The pic does no justice!
I took a lunch rest while Kazu went to my spot with my 6-wt to toss a dry to a couple of risers…and Mr. Nice Grayling was fooled.
Kazu went back to the spinning rod and got himself a bull trout too!
And this is what took a lot of the fish on the spinning gear…a 1.5” Grassminnow (Won’t find it here…it’s from Japan LOL).
At this time, we decided that we’ve kick-butt pretty well against the grayling, whitefish and bull trout…so we decided to drive back to Prince George a day early (to have one extra day for Terrace).
On the way, we stopped at a rest area. I went exploring for a river that I saw along the road while Kazu made coffee…and I found a moose calf carcass…so I stopped exploring after that LOL.
But the scenery along the way was amazing. Even at the rest area!
We were driving along and I was hoping to see some wildlife in BC. Earlier, we saw a cow moose on the side of the highway driving to Chetwynd. We had traffic behind us so we didn’t get to stop to take pics. As we were driving back to Prince George, a bear crossed the road (why did the bear crossed the road?) and caused traffic to slow. We drove past the crossing bear and then found a bull moose not 50 yards away. This was too much to just drive by without pics…
I have a video of the bear too…with Kazu’s music in the background LOL.
We arrived in Prince George before dark…and got some KFC to boot!
July 6th
We have a long drive ahead of us today…it is 576 km to Terrace but the drive took just a little over 7.5 hours. The scenery got better and better though.
About an hour to Terrace, Kazu thought he ran into a butterfly and he was hoping it wasn’t a bird. Well, we took a look in Terrace to find a bird on the grill. Poor little bird. I took a pic…but for respect for that bird, I’ll keep it from public viewing.
We kept on going toward Kitimat, since the Skeena was flooding. We got a good look at the Kitimat River along the way. We stopped at one location to check the river out.
And witnessed one person (who was camping across the river) hooked up, played and brought in a 20lb silver Chinook salmon. Needless to say, our hopes were up.
We ended the evening by getting to the mouth of the Kitimat. This would be our unofficial camping location for the next 3 days. Here’s a shot of the river right by our “campsite”. What a way to end the day.
I did get a line wet for 1 hour while Kazu made some cup noodles. We saw lots of fish jumping (excited salmon) but didn’t see any rod bent. (I hope tomorrow morning is much better)
Story continues...Part 3