British Columbia’s Blackwater River is worth the trip

BLACKWATER RIVER, British Columbia, Canada – The world should have more Blackwater rivers. The Blackwater is classified by British Columbia as a “special river,” and rightly so. Anytime eight anglers, three of the cast confessing to being nearly total strangers to fly-rod fishing, can brag of hooking and releasing more than 1,600 rainbows on a camping-out and float trip, then there is much to be said of the claim that the Blackwater is “a special river.”

It’s a long haul from Bangor, Maine, to British Columbia’s most scenic and wild river. First, there’s a flight from Bangor to Seattle, Washington, then a 121-mile automobile ride to Vancouver, British Columbia, and another flight to Quesnel, British Columbia, plus an aditional 72 miles over a road leading to Portage Lake, all preparatory to a float-plane lift to Gillies Crossing close by the banks of the Blackwater.

Mind you, all this to sleep in a tent on an L.L. Bean mattress that sprung an air leak the first night on the trail. But the Blackwater, if one hankers for quality trout fishing, rewards the odd-ball who claims to favoring a cold shower or a half-dozen nights of sleeping on hard ground.

What would you like to know about the Blackwater? It originates in a locale called Tweedsmuir Park and flows easterly, emptying into the mighty Fraser River south of Quesnel. The Blackwater has 85 miles of fishable waters, primarily from Kluskoil Lake to the Fraser.

The Blackwater is also known as the West Road River, stemming from explorer Alexander MacKenize’s journey in 1793, the final leg of his cross-Canada search for an overland route to the sea. This was the original native trading route, the Grease Trail, now perpetuated as the Alexander MacKenzie Trail paralleling the river to the Fraser.

So much for history….

The stretch between Gillies Crossing and our take-out point, Lower Blackwater Bridge, is a series of contrasts from calm pools to rushing rapids and from forested shoreline to red-streaked mud cliffs inhabited by swooping cliff swallows and dudes who’d prefer cold showers and a restless night on a bed of rocks.

Drifting and fishing this river is a wilderness adventure of infinite variety. The shoreline constantly changes from encroaching forest to clay or rock-etched bluffs. In the stretch from Gillies Crossing, the river drops from an altitude 2,500 to 1,800 feet at the Lower Blackwater Bridge. Anglers are restricted to single barbless hooks with a bait ban and the limit is two trout of more than 12 inches. Our party never killed a single fish, not even for a breakfast trout.

Our group of eight, each claiming to be a hardened adventurer, was comprised of such stalwart wilderness warriors as Team Captain Glenn L. Banks, and son, Bill, Elkhart, Ind., Barney Blondal, West Vancouver, British Columbia, Dick Davis, Wilsonville, Ore., G. Woodward Stover II, East Lansing, Mich., Dr. Charles J. Van Tassel Jr., M.D., Carmel, Ind., the most enjoyable tentmate I’ve had since a bear visited my campsite one night at Fowler Pond in Maine’s once-upon-a-time North Woods.

Team Captain Banks packed his lineup with three never-fished-before rookies, Dr. Van Tassel, Woody Stover and one of his sons, Bill. They were plucked from doing hard time at country clubs. The trio’s only angling experience had been gained through skimming the depths of water hazards to save the price of a golf ball. The trio performed well, collectively amassing a string of at least 600 rainbows and Stover three times stepped over his waders to show us how a Labrador retriever paddles to a duck blind.

We had a fabulous time with the trout. In too few days, the team released 10- to 21-inch rainbows by the hundreds. One morning, the One Man Fishing Machine, Ralph Haffner, invited me to sit on the stern end of the raft to fish his used water. I observed my friend of several years catch 13 trout on 13 casts and 50 or so from a single pool. After Ralphie hooked a half-hundred fish, he thoughtfully invited me to try his favorite pool. Haffner’s the kind of a fisherman who’d give an old friend the sleeves out of an out-of-style weskit.

Fishing in the Blackwater is fabulous – almost beyond belief. Ten times more fishermen than hunters visit British Columbia each year, so the pressure on its waters is growing each year. The rate of natural production is high, and the province sweetens the pot each year with 13,000,000 eggs, fry and legal size cutthroats, eastern brookies, steelhead, Kamloops, kokanees, fall-spawning rainbows and grayling. So a fishing trip in British Columbia can be a big moment in any angler’s lifetime.

No matter if your wallet is thick or thin, you’ll find these western provincial folk a quiet and courteous people, justly proud of their beautiful land and the Blackwater River. They pitch tents and live it up on flapjacks, Canadian bacon, and open-fire cooking. This is the perfect experience for an ultra-light rod, No. 6 fly line and a collection of trout flies – Royal Wullfs, Muddler Minnows, Michigan Hoppers, a variation of artificial grasshoppers and a respect for the quarry.

Like I came close to saying when we gathered in the first paragraph, what the North American continent needs is not a good five-cent cigar, but more rivers the likes of British Columbia’s Blackwater.