CARIBOO CHILCOTIN
Gustafson, Big Bar, and Little Bar lakes have great fishing for rainbow trout weighing up to two kilograms. Heavily stocked with rainbow trout, feed-rich Valentine Lake can yield fish weighing over three kilograms. While you can troll hardware, try to take advantage of this area’s good insect hatches for exciting dry-fly action. Travel along Highway 99
northeast from Lillooet to Highway 12 through Pavilion, and on toward Highway 97. Crown, Pavilion, and Turquoise Lakes, all found in Marble Canyon Provincial Park, offer good trolling and fly-casting for rainbow trout to two kilograms. Take the one-kilometre, self-guided trail leading to Marble Canyon, whose chalky deposits date back some 500 million years and resemble a crumbling castle wall. Visit historic Hat Creek Ranch Museum, with its numerous interactive displays and activities, and learn about the region’s habitation by both Interior First Nations and, more recently, homesteaders brought in by the gold rush.
In the ranching town of Clinton, the Cariboo Chilcotin’s pioneering spirit lives on. Don a Stetson hat and a pair of cowboy boots, and you’ll feel right at home among displays of old farming implements used by the early settlers to tame this wild land. About 16 kilometres south of 70 Mile House, detour slightly and head into Painted Chasm Provincial Park, British Columbia’s own little Grand Canyon, before rejoining the highway another three kilometres down the road. 70 Mile House was one of the very first stage stops on the Cariboo Waggon Road, where coach passengers could take a break on their journey north. At Mile 74, turn west off Highway 97 and travel along Cunningham Road to the T-intersection at the Cunningham Ranch to take a short ride into the history of the Cariboo. Turn north
60 The SPORT FISHING Guide 2012
at the junction and drive a few kilometres of the gravel gold rush road, almost unchanged from the 1860s, as it winds its way through the rolling countryside.
Chilcotin The Chilcotin region stretches
across the western Fraser Plateau, from the Fraser River to the Coast Mountains. Home to the Gang Ranch – one of the world’s largest cattle ranches – this cowboy country encompasses more than 16,000 square kilometres of hills and grasslands south of Williams Lake. With a backdrop of snow- crested coastal mountains, the pine forests, grasslands, and rolling hills boast impressive vistas and wildlife viewing while delivering clear, fish-filled rivers and lakes that are an angler’s dream. You can drive to most good fishing spots, but be adventurous by hiking, canoeing, horseback riding, or flying into some of the more remote backcountry waters. The region has a wide range of fishing lodges. You’ll find everything from basic accommodations to fully catered, high-end resorts that provide transportation and either fully guided or self-guided angling adventures.
Ready to take on the
unrestrained, acrobatic jumps of a wild Chilcotin rainbow trout at the end of your line? While not as powerful, these ’bows are almost as uncontrollable as a bucking bronco at the world-renowned Williams Lake Rodeo. Perhaps that’s why some anglers call a trout that throws its hook after a breathtaking series of aerial leaps a “rodeo release!” With its headwaters at Nimpo Lake, the upper Dean River supports a resident population of cutbow trout – an aggressive rainbow-cutthroat hybrid that takes well to wet flies, spinners, small spoons, crankbaits, and trolling plugs. Of course, you can also catch pure-strain cutthroat
and rainbows to two kilograms. The lake’s headwaters have good trolling and spin-casting for bull trout, Dolly Varden char, cutthroat, and rainbow trout. Throughout the fall and winter months, take advantage of the excellent odds of hooking a hefty salmon or crimson-striped steelhead in either the lake or river.
Floatplane service out of Nimpo Lake itself will take you over the majestic landscape that characterizes South Tweedsmuir Park. For superb wild cutthroat fishing, you’ll have to go the extra mile. Hike (or fly) into the high-mountain terrain of Turner Lake, and rest awhile to watch magnificent Hunlen Falls as it plunges into the Atnarko River Valley 253 metres below. Check your map to locate several nearby hike-in lakes to the south, home to naïve wild cutties that seldom see any fishing lures. Other fly-in lakes include Toms, Tsacha, Tsilbekuz, Crazy Bear, Eliguk, Junker, and Squiness; all host wild rainbow and cutthroat trout, up to one kilo. Travel to Clearwater, Puntzi, Horn, Alexis, Anahim, Charlotte, One Eye, and Tatla lakes via Highway 20. They offer fine fishing for rainbows to one and half kilos, as well as lake char, kokanee, or Dolly Varden. It’s worth the longer drive from Highway 20 to Elkin, Chaunigan, and Vedan lakes, whose resplendent mountainous setting is matched by world-class fly-fishing for rainbow trout weighing up to two kilograms. The Chilcotin and Chilko rivers offer superb fishing for salmon and Dolly Varden char, and are especially prized for their late-autumn steelhead fishery. You’ll also find some of the finest dry fly- fishing in the province along the 300-kilometre Blackwater River, a major tributary of the Fraser. A little further south, Chilko Lake is a glinting opal in the heart of Ts’yl-os Provincial Park. Stretching 80 kilometres, Chilko is by far the longest lake in the coastal
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