So why the hubbub now? Well, it all started last September when, according to subsequent news reports, a hunter killed and dressed a mountain goat within a stone’s throw of what has been described as “a heavily used” campsite along the trail into the high country. When a group of non-hunters discovered the kill site, they were outraged, partly because the goat had been killed so close to the campsite and partly because the goats in the area were habituated to humans and killing any of them was akin to killing a pet.

Not the wisest choice of actions, granted, but when conservation officers were called in to investigate, they determined that the hunter had done absolutely nothing wrong. He was in possession of one of the five Limited Entry Hunting draw tags issued for mountain goat in that area, he had taken the hide and meat as required and he had properly voided his tag. His decision to take that goat was not a matter of a wildlife conservation concern.

But what about the public safety concern? Was it prudent for the hunter to fill his tag that close to a campsite? Again, the investigators found no wrongdoing. The campsite in question was not a designated BCParks campsite, but rather an unauthorized one set up by other users close to the home range of the goats. It was unofficially serviced by the regional parks office, as was the trail leading to it. And the goats there have indeed been habituated to human contact after being hand-fed through the summer, a practice that’s ostensibly frowned on by BCParks but tolerated in the field.

So, as much as the hunter may have showed poor judgement in deciding to fill his tag then and there, a considerable onus rests on the campers who established the campsite against park guidelines, the visitors who turned the area into a private petting zoo against park guidelines and BCParks who condoned the whole thing. Ergo, in order allay wildlife conservation and public safety concerns in the Valhalla high country—as well as other provincial parks—BCParks needs to keep out the users who actually perpetuated the problem, not the hunters.

The dams built during the 50-year frenzy to harness the hydro electric potential of the 2,000 kilometre Columbia and its tributaries also had an indirect impact on Columbia sturgeon, fracturing their habitat, blocking their migrations up and down the system and, in many cases, barring access to spawning grounds and nursery areas. Not only was the population of adult fish decimated, but there were also far too few young fish in the upper basin to rebuild or even hold the population for the future. With fewer than 1,000 adult fish in the Canadian portion of the river, the white sturgeon of the Columbia’s upper basin was designated in 2006 as an endangered population destined to die out within the lifetime of most people living along its banks.

But poke around in the calm and shallow back bays near the West Kootenays town of Trail of late and you’re liable to encounter these endangered relics from the age of dinosaurs in surprising numbers. Granted, these fish aren’t quite in the same size as the big adults, but they are sturgeon, they are plentiful and, if participants in the Upper Columbia White Sturgeon Recovery Initiative have their way, these foot-and-a-half-long, perfect miniatures, likely survivors of a release of hatchery-reared juveniles at Beaver Creek in Trail several years ago, will become cornerstones in the return of the Upper Columbia white sturgeon population.

The cross-border organization, also known by the equally tongue twisting acronym UCWSRI, has been releasing juvenile sturgeon in the Columbia since 2001 when somewhere between 10,000 and 12,000 fish the size of your hand were released at several sites including the base of the Hugh Keenleyside Dam near Castlegar and Beaver Creek. These days the annual releases are more modest, numbering between 2,000 and 3,000 juveniles but the success ratio, initially pegged at about 10 per cent, appears to be three times that.

It bodes well for the upper Columbia’s white sturgeon populations by the middle of the current century, but what about the fish between now and then? The presence of a few wild juveniles—recognizable by the absence of identifying marks on their scutes or armour plating—represent half a percentage of the age class in the river. That’s good new and bad. It means the adult females are still producing young rather than absorbing the roe for lack of essential spawning habitat or required water temperatures. And some of the eggs are evolving into free swimming youngsters.

On the other hand, there’s the question of why the wild juveniles make up such a skimpy proportion of the total population of immatures.

“If these prehistoric fish are to survive long-term, we need to understand why younger age classes are not surviving to adulthood,” said James Crossman, sturgeon biologist for BCHydro, one of the partners in the UCWSRI.

The key to that mystery may have something to do with water temperature and quality, but with the overall population of white sturgeon in Canada’s portion of the Columbia River numbering upwards of 10,000 fish, young and old, their immediate survival, if not explosive, appears to be rock solid.

Kimberley’s urban deer problem amounts to 242 animals, up 20 per cent from last year and the cull, carried out by hired exterminators using cage traps, is for 100 of those animals. They’ll be captured, dispatched with bolt guns and butchered with the venison delivered to a food bank. Estimated cost per animal is $350. Similar operations are planned to remove problem deer in nearby Cranbrook and Invermere. Penticton, farther to the west, hasn’t yet turned its back on the controlled hunt but is watching the situation in the East Kootenays carefully before deciding on its course of action.

It would be wise if these municipalities would make note to include the cost of deer control in their annual budgets for at least as long as it takes for them to come to their senses. Removing a few animals will not make the urban deer problem go away, it just provides the semblance of doing something and doing it in a politically acceptable manner.

The truth is that, provided you’ve paid your dues and have become for obsessively attentive to detail, sooner or later your line will stop mid-drift. That’s when magic happens.

The fight is good, perhaps not quite as aerial as that of a summer steelie, but infinitely more powerful and eventually you bring the fish to hand. Gripping the wrist just above the tail, you hold the fish still while you slip the hook and marvel once again that the live thing you hold in your hand is no warmer than the water of the river. It accepts the gesture of freedom, a stately being slipping unhurriedly back to its lie.

And when your fingers stop their trembling, you rerig and step back into the ice cold water, casting 100 times, 200 times, 300 times. Hoping the magic will happen again.

Here are some of southern BC’s prime winter steelhead waters to feed your chromer obsession.

Somas-Stamp This is one of BC’s most popular winter steelhead rivers. The watershed actually consists of two main branches—the Sproat and the Stamp—which combine to become the Somass which flows into Alberni Inlet at Port Alberni. Runs of winter steelhead show up after the beginning of December and the best fishing starts a couple weeks later and lasts through to the middle of February. The Confluence where the Sproat and Stamp meet is where most of the fresh fish pile up. Upstream, about a kilometre above the rifle range, the Bucket is another spot that holds an abundance of fish. Bait is permitted below the Bucket, banned above. Fishing from a drift boat provides the best action.  Talk to the guys at Gone Fishing Shop in Port Alberni to get the latest fishing reports.

Big Qualicum Located some 25 kilo metres northwest of Parksville on the east coast of Vancouver Island, this little gem has a small run, but if you can’t find a steelie willing to play, the river has some good cuttie fishing to make up for it. Most steelies are hooked in the lower part of the11 kilometre stretch from Horne Lake down to its estuary, but figure on hiking up from the hatchery. Look for runs in January, but water is usually low and clear, so time your fishing to a bit of rain. Talk to the folks at Nile Creek Fly Shop for updates on the runs and water conditions.

Gold River If you want to fish over strictly wild, native steelhead, this is the river to hit. It’s a wild stream that starts in the highlands of central Vancouver Island and pounds through deep gorges to the west coast, thouugh the lower 15 kilometres are relatively angler-friendly. Access is by way of Highway 28 northwest, 90 kilometres from Campbell River. The winter runs usually show up in late December or early January and, slightly larger than the summer-run steelies, they range between five and 15 pounds, with rare fish hitting 20 pounds. Fly fishing can be tough because of the heavy current and the best success is out of drift boats (no motors). A bait ban is in effect and all steelhead must be released. Bring rain gear, good rain gear. For the latest information on river conditions on the Gold, get in touch with River Sportsman in Campbell River.

Vedder/Chilliwack River This tributary to the Fraser is likely the most popular of the Lower Mainland’s winter steelhead streams. Though 80 kilometres in length from its source in the high country of Hannagan Pass on the American side of the border, less than half—from Slesse Creek down to Wilson Road—is fishable water, but in that stretch are many runs and pools, along with many overlooked pockets that hold winter steelhead. A good proportion of the 5,000 plus steelhead that enter the river every year are fin-clipped at the hatchery and can legally be retained, while fish with the adipose fin intact must be released unharmed. Bait is allowed upstream of the Vedder Crossing, banned below. Fred’s Custom Tackle in Chilliwack is the hub of all buzz about Vedder River fishing.

Cheakamus A relatively small, but highly productive river, the Cheakamus is a tributary to the Squamish River which enters Howe Sound at the municipality of Squamish, about an hour from Vancouver. While the river itself extends to Whistler, only the first 17 kilometres are accessible to migratory fish, and of these the lower few winding and contorted kilometres are the most fishable. The lower waters are accessible from a forestry road that cuts right just after the bridge, alternately Highway 99 parallels the river on the other side. Be prepared to do some hiking to find the pockets. A bait ban is in effect and all steelhead must be released. Concerted restoration efforts have been carried out to restore Cheakamus steelhead numbers following a 2005 railcar accident that dumped 40,000 litres of concentrated lye into its waters. Contact Dave Steele at Highwater Sports (604 986-3239) for the latest skinny on the Cheakamus.

Chehalis From its source at the outlet of Chehalis Lake, the river tumbles south through Hemlock Valley to meet the Harrison River. The middle river, upstream and down from the hatchery is easily accessible, but it also tends to get the most fishing pressure. Access to the upper waters where fishing pressure is light is at best treacherous and at worst deadly; do not go there alone. This is no place for the faint of heart. The first winter run chromers arrive in late November to produce some fishing in December, but it can be especially good after a warm January rain that raises the water level slightly and reduces visibility. Get up-to-date river news from Hub Sports in nearby Abbotsford.

Thompson River To omit the Thompson would be unforgivable, since it is, without question, our most famous steelhead rivers internationally. Yet, its season lasts only to the end of the year and though the water is as bitterly cold as any winter steelhead river can be, the fish are not technically winter steelhead but rather summer-runs. Most of the fishing within a ten kilometre range of Spences Bridge, located 35 kilometres upstream from its confluence with the Fraser at Lytton. It’s a dangerous, big river with a current that belies its power and polished boulders often made treacherous by a fine film of rime. But the fish are a dozen pounds and more, they respond well to a quartered fly and you simply can’t stay away. It’s strictly catch and release fishing with 1,000 or more steelies in the river, but it can shut down tight on a moment’s notice if the runs fall short. For river updates, contact John or Laurie Kingston at the Log Cabin Pub.

Keep in mind that steelhead numbers are scant on virtually all Pacific coast streams and both provincial and federal authorities are quick to shut down the fishing, even during the course of the season, if there is the slightest concern over the resource. Before you head out on any steelhead water, check for bait bans, nonretention regulations and even closures.

Oh, and make sure you have a steelhead stamp. Don’t assume you do, check your fishing permit carefully to make sure.

For several weeks now, pods of steelhead—powerful, dime-bright and still bearing sea lice—have slipped into the rivers on the perigee tides of early winter to shoulder their way past the litter of spent chum carcasses to upriver lies. As November slips into December and the old year into the new, more pods fresh from the ocean will take up positions in the shadow of submerged boulders and the tail-outs of broad pools, waiting patiently for the advent of spring and the spawning season.

These are winter steelhead, differing from the summer runs in that they start to enter the rivers late in the year, after the salmon are all but gone, and continuing to do so until late March and even beyond. Compared to the outrageous surfeit of hundreds of thousands of salmon into the river systems of southern British Columbia, steelhead are relatively few in numbers, sometimes a few hundred to a particular stream and perhaps a few thousand to the more productive rivers. Depending on the hydrography of a particular system, the runs are somewhat evenly split between summer run fish which take up the lies many months earlier and winter’s chromers.

These are powerful fish and, on average, larger than the summer runs, having benefited from the additional time spent gorging on the bounty of the oceans and also tending to have higher proportions of sea-maidens that have spent two and three years asea before returning to their native streams. To make sense of these runs and define their character, we’ve created two more categories—early winter steelhead which enter freshwater sometime between late November and early February, and the late winter fish which come in between the last half of February and the middle of April to spawn.

Of the two, the early winter fish are most revered and, as a rule, the late winter fish are most apt to take a hook. It makes sense really.  By the time the late runs come in, the water temperatures are on the rise, but for the early winter fish, the water is numbingly cold and they fin sluggishly near to the bottom for weeks on end, energized from time to time by a rise of water, a slight warming of the river or a change in the water clarity. Sure, they’ll occasionally take an offering presented to them just so and close to the bottom, but the odds of hooking into a bullet chromer surge significantly when a day or two of warm rain flips the right switches.

No matter what the conditions, however, the magic formula requires two elements—the right lure is important to a degree but the presentation needs to be perfect. Getting the lure wrong is forgivable, a sloppy presentation is not.  Where bait is permitted, cured salmon roe as single eggs or in clusters of two or three in a roe bag is the go-to bait for steelhead, followed in close second place by sand shrimp. For rivers where naturals are prohibited, carry Gooey Bobs, plastic worms and Glo Bugs in bubble gum, peach and red. Finding the right colour is a matter of working one colour after the other through a run.  Sometimes adding a few fibres of white or red yarn renders the offering irresistible to the fish. Spinners—medium to large in fast water, small in slower runs—also work well below a float.

Fly fishing the early winter runs can be a test of patience during which the angler has abundant opportunity to perfect casting techniques and ponder life. Aside from the small number of truly elite winter fly chuckers, count yourself lucky if you average better than one take in every thousand casts. Raise a fish every 500 casts and you have bragging rights in that small clique of truly good anglers.

It entails casting sink tip lines of up to 850 grains, usually less, to sweep a fly—sometimes an egg pattern but most often a big and gaudy attractor pattern like the Popsicle—through the winter zone which is the bottom two feet of the water column. Some waters—like the Thompson—are inordinately large, so much so that covering them effectively with a single hand rod is a tiresome exercise, much less so with two handed Spey casting.

Come February, the water starts to warm every so slightly, but with every upward decimal point, the fish progressively spread out through the run. It’s a good time to be on the river, but then any time there are winter steelhead in the river is a good time to be on the water. Even if you can barely feel your feet but for the stabbing pain of the cold. There’s hot coffee on shore and your fishing partner has a fire going. Just one more cast, you promise yourself as the snowflakes swirl down thicker than you remember them. Just one more cast.

Located as it is within easy striking distance of Maple Ridge and Abbotsford and barely an hour’s drive from downtown Vancouver, the three-kilometre stretch of fishable water on the Stave River from the Ruskin Dam down to where it flows into the Fraser River tends to see consistently heavy pressure for the duration of the salmon runs in British Columbia’s Lower Mainland. And no wonder. It’s one of the few places in the region where anglers can fish off the gravel bars and expect to catch fish. Plenty of fish.  But come late October and the first half of November, it turns into combat fishing and that’s not a pretty sight.

Sure, I’ve met some wonderful fishermen there and I’ve also bumped up against some who just weren’t quite clear on the concept of angling. But the yobbo who was out there earlier this week foul hooking one fish after the other, dragging them up on shore, yanking out the hook and then unceremoniously kicking the fish back into the water was definitely out of touch. At least one angler took the liberty of saying so.

Now, foul hooking one chum after another is no great feat when schools numbering in the thousands are stacked up like sardines, but with that many fish in the water, you can still catch fish until your arms are sore by simply fishing a bit higher in the water column to avoid snagging them. These are exceptionally aggressive salmon and they’ll slam anything that comes within reach. Most anglers practice catch and release and they release the fish properly.

But not our grizzled friend and I silently cheered when two Department of Fisheries and Oceans officers came walking down the gravel bar, bearing straight for the snagger. Seems they had been observing and videotaping both his catch and his release techniques for quite some time before they apprehended him.

The Stave, at one time, was as wild as any BC river can be, tumbling down out of the Garibaldi highlands over boulder strewn cataracts and steep canyons some 85 kilometres to the Fraser. But in the early 1900s, the river was tamed for its hydroelectric potential, first with the Stave Falls Dam—completed in 1912—at the outlet of Stave Lake and later with the Ruskin Dam—completed in 1929—about six kilometres farther downstream. Between them, they effectively harness about 40 kilometres of river. Beyond Stave Lake, the river is an unruly stream with surprisingly good fishing for rainbows and Dolly Varden trout.

Thankfully, it’s still too remote and too much trouble for the rabble who think fishing is jamming a 5/0 hook into the tail of a spawning salmon and then winching it up across a gravel bar. I think maybe I’ll spend next fall’s chum salmon run up there.

This is deer country where mule deer thrive in the lush second growth, often alongside pockets of whitetails. Travel the lumber roads in the cool of morning or in that magic hour at day’s end and you’ll see them picking their way along the edges of the clearcuts or bouncing across the road ahead of the vehicle. Or, if you just want to see deer, spend some time in the farmlands along the Crowsnest Highway where they gather by the dozens to graze in the fields, often coming right into the towns to help themselves to garden greens and manicured shrubs. Most are mule deer does with their fawns and the odd yearling buck still tagging along by force of habit, but here and there along the river bottoms are bands of whitetails as well.

That same mix of mulies and whitetails prevails in the back country away from the paved roads, the towns and the farmlands. In some places Crown land starts barely 10 kilometres in, other places you might have to travel twice that to reach huntable area. Boundary Creek Road which starts at the Crowsnest just east of Greenwood is one of the primary access points, providing access to a vast network of forestry roads from Wallace Creek all the way north to the Terraced Peak and Gable Mountain areas. The Christian Valley Road which follows the Kettle River Valley north from Westbridge also provides access to this high country by way of Lost Horse and Thone Creeks. Christian Valley tends to have more hunting pressure during October when any mule deer carrying antler and any whitetail—antlered or antlerless (check the regulations  to verify since this is subject to change)—is fair game. In September as well as November, mule deer must carry four points on at least one side, not counting brow tines, and only whitetail bucks are legal.

Cutting your tags on either one or both species is not overly difficult in Boundary Creek country, but cutting your tags on a respectable buck requires passing up lesser rack and a willingness to push yourself. Mulie bucks hold to the spruce and fir forests of the high country—the higher the better—for as long as they can, making their way down when the snow starts to accumulate at the end of October and the rut intensifies. Whitetail bucks are more likely to be found along the crest of lower ridges and along the edges of the clearcuts and they too start to seek out does around this time. The mule deer season has historically closed ten days into November, but those ten days are prime for heavy antlered bucks during their fall migration and the rut. Whitetail bucks are legal to the end of November and glassing the edges of lumbered areas is a highly productive tactic.

And if you’re in the area, bring a shotgun for grouse. Though the birds are far from plentiful this fall, we still managed to pick up a mixed bag of ruffed, Franklin’s (similar to a spruce) and blues. The latter, now properly called dusky grouse to distinguish them from the coastal sooty grouse, are amazing game birds. Weighing about the same as a brace of ruffed grouse, they gravitate to the Douglas fir forests on the crests of high ridges and around the talus slopes of the subalpine, sometimes in flocks of a dozen birds or more. The meat is light coloured almost like that of a ruffie and mildly flavoured. But more on these birds in another blog.

Setting Up The Hunt
I usually stay at the Greenwood Motel (1-866-955-6363) which provides large, clean rooms at competitive rates and kitchenettes for a modest premium. This time around, I also stayed in Rock Creek at the Gold Dust Motel ((250 446-2222) which has about half a dozen units; large rooms, reasonable prices, no kitchenettes and some highway rumble. I’m told the Mile 0 in Midway next to the gas station is another reasonable option. For something more rustic, Jewel Lake Resort off Boundary Creek Road (14 kilometres from Greenwood) offers basic hunter cabins, but these are usually in high demand with reservations made far in advance.

If you need to get your deer in out of the elements, Bruce Allison (250 445-6331) in Greenwood has a walk-in cooler for just that purpose.  He’s extremely helpful and accommodating and the rate per animal is surprisingly reasonable.

One of the best tools for finding your way around the forestry roads that reach deep into this area is the Boundary Forest District Recreation Map, published under the now-defunct Forest Recreation Map Program. Though outdated to some degree, it nevertheless provides a basic guide to the network of forestry roads throughout the Boundary region.  In conjunction with a GPS unit, I rely on it to find my way into areas I want to hunt. Another option is to pick up a Thompson-Okanagan Backroads Mapbook available at gas stations and convenience stores throughout the region. They’re up-to-date and complete, though I sometimes find them detailed to a fault, making them difficult to decipher at a glance.  Either way, I like to familiarize myself with the area by poring over Google Earth’s satellite images of my favourite haunts in bird’s eye-view.

Rock Creek Trading Post, on the west side of Highway 3 and a stone’s throw beyond the Gold Pan Café/gas station/motel, offers outstanding coffee brewed from beans roasted on-site. Opens after nine in the morning and closed early week.

The Copper Eagle over in Greenwood (34 kilometres farther east on Highway 3), on the other hand, opens its doors daily at six in the morning, serving up freshly brewed coffee, home baked bread and, for lunch, a wonderful soup-and-sandwich combo.

Best prices on gasoline are in Midway (Boundary Fuels, 19 kilometres east of Rock Creek) and in Greenwood (Race Trac, just at the entrance to town from the west).

McMynn’s supermarket (just about behind Boundary Fuels in Midway) offers a surprisingly good selection on groceries, including fresh produce.

However, it was the sudden realization that the range so well sequestered among the trees was being gradually but certainly surrounded by residential housing developments. At first, the advance was slow, but from what I saw yesterday, it has increased to fever pitch with over a dozen developers building townhouse complexes and executive homes and buyers standing in line to take over.

No, it wasn’t being tied up in slow moving traffic because of construction that annoyed me but rather the pattern so often repeated, not just in western Canada but coast to coast, where gun clubs are being forced to close their doors because of the encroachment of developments. It’s not the gun clubs themselves that seem to be the problem, but rather the steady thunder of big bore guns going off throughout the day that disturbs the Saturday morning tranquility. So the complaints turn to pressure and even legal action to have the guns silenced, and if you can’t fire a rifle at a rifle range you no longer have a rifle range.

True, there’s no safety issue with the range I’ve been using. It’s well scalloped into the side of the mountain on a large tract of land owned by the club, the berms are higher than they need to be and all of the shooting is done under the watchful eye and ironclad discipline of the range officers. But don’t kid yourself, all that will matter little when the new home owners start to complain about what sounds like a war zone just beyond their manicured hedges.

So, hey guys, if you see me scowling when you flag me down to give priority to yet another cement truck jockeying into a tight corner, I’m not mad at you. I’m just wondering where I’ll be able to go shooting in five years’ time.

Travel through the region and, like as not, you’ll spot a moose along the side of the road, perhaps a black bear sauntering across it or, among the hay bales, one of those big Dakota whitetail bucks the Peace region is known for. These days, you’ll also see huge homemade placards railing against something called Site C.

So, what is this Site C? To really get a feel for it, let’s take a short side trip south on 100^th Street—that’s just past the Safeway store—in Fort St. John. Three kilometres from where you left the Alaska Highway behind, you’ll come to a sharp bend in the road and a dirt parking lot. That’s called the Peace Lookout and, ignoring the rusted hulls of a couple of derelict cars (there’s been several proposals to clean up the site, but the cars are still there), you get a great perspective of the Peace River Valley. Down to the left, along the bank of the river, that’s known as Old Fort where Hudson Bay Company factor, Frank Beatton, established a trading post known as Fort St. John in 1872.

Looking upriver, a short distance away is the influx of the Moberly River where the first trading post and fort—called Rocky Mountain House at the time—was established by the Northwest Company in 1793, trading with natives in the far flung Peace River watershed. The river actually originated about 200 kilometres to the northwest at Finlay Forks where the Finlay and Parsnip Rivers once joined. However, in the early 1960s, BC Electric Company (subsequently taken over by BC Hydro and Power Authority) embarked on an ambitious project to build a dam at Peace Canyon to impound the waters of the Parsnip and Finlay along with ten or so lesser rivers. The resulting reservoir crept back across the land, drowning 177,300 hectares of wilderness the Tsay Keh Dene called home. In a final act of arrogance, the impoundment was named in honour of Ray Williston, then Minister of Lands, Forests and Water Resources. Williston Lake is listed as the seventh largest reservoir in the world.

The Parsnip and Finlay are no longer identified as the source of the Peace River. Nowadays the reservoir—Williston Lake—is considered its well spring and it begins where the water spews out of the Gordon Shrum generation station below the W.A.C. Bennett Dam (completed in 1968 and named in honour of the premier of the province at the time) on the southeastern extremity of Peace Reach.

In 1980, realizing the continued potential of the river to produce addition electricity, BC Hydro added the Peace Canyon Dam, 23 kilometres downstream from the Bennett installation, creating 890-hectare Dinosaur Lake, so named for the abundance of dinosaur fossils unearthed during construction. That’s when talk of yet a third hydroelectric facility—noncommittally named Site C—first came to the fore. It was to be located below the Peace Canyon Dam and create an 83-kilometre-long reservoir with a surface area of 9,310 hectares to feed six turbines with a collective output of 5,100 gigawatt hours of electricity a year. The British Columbia Hydro and Power Authority insists that, looking forward, this will be critical to the growing energy needs of the province, providing electricity to 450,000 additional homes.

Now look again down the bank of the Peace. Straight ahead you’ll see a cutline etched into the near shore, running across the island and up the far bank. That, approximately, is where the Site C dam will go in and, come its scheduled inauguration in 2020, it will raise the water level by 60 metres. Where the river was, there will be a lake stretching all the way back to the Peace Canyon Dam, drowning not only that part of the main river but also the tributaries along the way. The Moberly and the original site of what has become Fort St. John will be under water as will be the homes and livelihoods of the people who live along its banks. All so that we all can have a 72-inch flat screen television blaring away in each room, all day long. That, in a nutshell, is the gist of the Site C protest.

While you’re at the Peace River Lookout, maybe take a picture or two for posterity, just so future generations can see that stretch of the Peace. Before it became a manmade lake for the sake of progress.

On average, they’re not particularly big. Well, there are exceptions, like the 37-pound Kitimat River brute that has dominated top honours in the International Game Fish Association’s record books since 1999. But for the most part, they’ll go 14 pounds or so, with the occasional fish pushing 20. What these stubby salmon do have is shoulders and if you’re not on the game when they hit, the next lull in the action comes a minute or two later when they’ve spooled you. It’s that quick and that vicious.

Up to now, most of the chum have been hooked as a by-catch by coho anglers, but as the run builds, they fish stack up in the slicks and runs, literally shouldering out any other salmon that might have found the current to its liking. They’ll be silver bright, perhaps with a few sea lice still clinging to them for the first few days, but it doesn’t take long for the distinctive purple stripes to emerge along the flanks. By November, with the spawn coming on, most of the incoming fish fresh from the salt will also show colour, but they’ll be no less belligerent.

Hard to hook? Not by a long shot with that many fish in the water. The trick is to get the depth right. Work your offering too shallow and you’ll get plenty of casting practice but not a whole lot of thrills. Work it too deep and you’ll either snag one fish after the other or lose and awful lot of gear in the rocks. Mid column is just about right, say two feet, give or take, below the surface. One rig that’s effective for probing a run and then working a school is to run a quarter to half ounce lead-head jig below a dink float. Start covering the water with the rig set at a foot and a half, then drop it six inches for the next sweep.  You should start hitting fish pretty quick, but if you find you’re snagging them, try shortening up again to run the rig a bit higher.

For fly fishing, there’s nothing like it. I use a floating line, tie in a three foot length of lead core line and then a two-step, six-foot leader ending in 10 pound test tippet. Yes, you can get fancier and more sophisticated, but the fish won’t notice. The lead core butt makes it easy to adjust to depth by hacking a few inches off the length to go higher in the water column; start long and cut back, not the other way round. A nine-weight outfit is just about right for controlling the lead core and letting the fish know who is boss. You’ll want a good disc drag and a bunch of backing, primarily to fill your reel and increase the rate of take-up rather than for fighting the fish because, if you’re fighting a chum in backing, the odds of bringing it to hand are slim.

Spey casting is extremely effective for both getting the line to where the fish are, but I find my 13-weight Spey provides too much muscle and squelches the fight, so I do most of the fishing with a single hand nine-footer.

Two last points. What colour jig or fly? Any colour is good as long as it’s purple. Actually, I’m not sure that the fish are that selective, but I’ve always had good luck with that colour and so I’m sticking to it. My favourite fly is a purple marabou Popsicle-style abomination.

And once you get the formula down, you can literally fish until you’re too tired to make another cast. Proving what? By all means hook a few fish and, if the regs permit, keep one or two bright ones for hot smoking, but enough is enough. Step back, show a kid how to catch them, or walk up the river to photograph eagles and seals. It’s all part of the experience.