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A Jewel in the Pacific Northwest
By Tim Guilfoile
There’s a river that rises at AllisonPass in the Canadian Cascades of British Columbia. From there it flows northwest into ManningProvincialPark. It turns abruptly south where it receives Snass Creek and the KlesilkwaRiver and then veers southeast to flow past the Canadian-United States border. This waterway and its tributaries drain an area of 1.7 million acres of the Cascade Range and then offers its waters to Puget Sound.
The SkagitRiver is a jewel of the Pacific Northwest. In 1978, the United States Congress established the Skagit Wild and Scenic River System. This system includes 158.5 miles of the Skagit and its tributaries — the Sauk, Suiattle, and Cascade rivers. The Wild and Scenic designation is meant to protect and enhance the values that caused it to be listed, namely: free flowing, exceptional water quality and remarkable wildlife, fish, and scenic qualities.
I booked a float trip on the Skagitt with a local guide in early February. We launched the Hyde at the crack of dawn just east of Concrete, Washington. Ryan Smith, the guide, Ryan’s dog Grover, an American pointer mix, and I floated out to the middle of the river just as the sun started to rise over the Cascades. As the light unveiled the river and all its splendor, I couldn’t help but smile at what lay before me.
The Skagit is a big river. Wide and broad shouldered, clear water and a clean gravel bed, deep pools, complex cover with snags and cut banks, gravel bars, a magnificent floodplain and a healthy system of tributaries. This habitat is a perfect design for our target, the Bull trout.
Bull trout like deep pools at the end of a run of fast moving water. Ryan would anchor the drift boat far enough to one side of a fast flowing run so we didn’t get caught in the current and well above the pool beneath. This meant long casts. So Ryan introduced me to the two handed spey cast. I had never used a two-handed spey rod before, but I caught on quickly. Lift off the water, back to form the D-loop and a gentle pitch forward. Fifty, sixty, seventy foot casts all day long and effortlessly. If I had been using a conventional fly rod, my arm would still be recovering.
I’d cast the fly perpendicular and into the fast flowing run, give a slight mend, let the fly drift down into the pool, then swing around, straighten out and briefly dangle. This scene was repeated many times with a variety of streamers. Gray Back Minnow, Purple Tail Prawn, Black Ghost, Jock Scott, Bunny Leech, Matuka Skulpin and nothing worked. So I asked Ryan if he might have a Wooly Bugger, my go-to fly. And sure enough, he pulled out a white, beaded Bugger.
I picked up the rhythm again and got the fly into the flow. Just as the Bugger hit the pool, WHAM, fish on. There’s no stripping with this style of fishing so the fish is on the reel immediately. The rod bent nearly in half and my first inclination was to raise the rod tip, but I was quickly advised to keep the rod low and parallel to the water. The fish took the line and then gave into the reel and then ran again. It fought and swirled and broke the surface and dove back to the bottom. This fish was tough and spunky even as Ryan tried to finesse it into the net. I guess that’s how they earned the name Bull.
Bull trout are members of the char subgroup of the salmon family, which also includes the Dolly Varden, lake trout, and Arctic char. Its head and mouth are unusually large for salmonids, giving it its name. Bull trout may be either migratory, moving throughout large river systems, lakes, and the ocean, or they may be resident, remaining in the same stream their entire lives. They can grow to more than 20 pounds in lake environments but Bull trout that live in streams rarely exceed 4 pounds. Bull trout are listed as a threatened species under the U.S. Endangered Species Act throughout their range in the contiguous United States due to loss of habitat and siltation due primarily to logging, mining and road building. They are a magnificent species and worthy of protection.
Fishing continued through the day. Ryan slowly moved us down river. Sometimes the fast runs were river right, sometimes river left, sometimes both and sometimes right down the middle. We’d anchor and Grover would frequently hop out of the boat and explore the banks while I fished the pools. My casting continued to improve. Long, long casts. Now and then, we’d try a different fly, but on this day the Bull trout were eating that white Wooly Bugger. The ferocity with which these trout hit was like a hawk swooping down at lightning speed and then instantaneously hitting and killing its prey. I gained a great respect for the Bull trout as a hard-hitting fish that gives a relentless and powerful fight.
As we pulled up to the take-out, the sun was setting and I turned to capture one more gaze at the Cascades and the watershed below. We saw only one other boat the entire day. That and the mountains towering over the Skagit reminded me that I was in a treasured bit of wilderness. It also reinforced that preserving all the day had to offer did not come without a price. Sportsmen fought hard to achieve the establishment of the Skagit Wild and Scenic River System that keeps the watershed clean and protected from development. And as we speak, sportsmen in Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana and Nevada are fighting to revise and increase critical habitat for Bull trout essential to the preservation of the species.
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