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High Desert Holy Water

Ehor Boyanowsky

I DROVE UP ON ONE OF THOSE MOON-BATHED EVENINGS WHEN BRITISH COLUMBIA’S THOMPSON RIVER VALLEY APPEARS AS AN ALIEN LANDSCAPE CONJURED UP IN SILVER LIGHT AND SHADOW BY SOME VENERABLE, STORY-SPINNING MEDICINE MAN. TESTOSTERONE-CRAZED BIGHORN SHEEP WITH FIRE-OPAL EYES, A WILDLIFE HAZARD THAT GETS A BIG-GAME HUNTER’S BLOOD BOILING AT THE END OF A THREE-HOUR DRIVE NORTHEAST FROM VANCOUVER, BRIEFLY BLOCKED MY WAY AT SPENCE’S BRIDGE.

As I pulled up to the gate at Nighthawk, a riverside sanctuary I stumbled across after a 10-year search for Thompson River property, the pungent odor of sagebrush filled my nostrils—ambrosia to this desert rat. Serenaded by a couple coyotes, I pitched the 40-year-old Eureka Drawtite tent and lit a fire. The cliff across the river, now a gigantic drive-in screen illuminated by the projector moon, erupted as another irrigation-triggered avalanche crashed to the river. And then there was gratifying nothingness. Silence.

After feeding my English setter, Thompson S. Hunter, and sipping a dram of Aberlour as the fire shrank to a cache of glowing coals, I crawled into a cocoon-like old down bag. Recalling the morning a rattler repeatedly crawled through camp, I resisted the temptation to sleep under the stars. Away from the cares of city and career, I slept the dreamless sleep of the dead.

Waking at nine instead of seven, I decided, having missed the dawn fishing patrol, not to rush. I lingered over coffee after bacon and eggs, savoring the spectacle of mule deer and Canada geese grazing in the pasture that unfurled toward the river, rimmed by giant ponderosas, some green, some now red in death from the pine-beetle plague.

I drove down to Spence’s Bridge, steelhead mecca, where the Nicola River, birth mother of the world’s most powerful steelhead, joins the Thompson and steelheaders from the four corners of Earth, eyes glazed with lust for a giant fish, gather in October and November. As I approached the Graveyard Pool, the panting of my ever-hopeful pup punctuated the rattle overhead of tinder-dry cottonwood leaves. Alas, even on this pool, where on a dry fly I landed my two largest steelhead, magnificent creatures pushing 30 pounds, I was less than hopeful. The rumor mill said anglers faced the weakest steelhead run in 20 years.

Then I received signs for hope. A lone spoon-caster worked the slack belly separating the head of the run from the long glide of the tail. Any luck? I asked. He’d just lost one. Above him, a fly-fisher washed his hands in the river, raving about the giant he’d just released. How long had he been here? Less than an hour, he answered.

I could tell he was a newcomer. As I entered the pool at the head, he stepped into the run below me. Bad form, especially for someone recently graced with a fish. Steelhead etiquette dictates that after you’ve played a fish you go to the top of the run, behind those working through. I said nothing and we chatted pleasantly. Then the surface of the river swelled: materializing specter-like before us in midcurrent was the agonizingly slow head and tail rise of a great fish. Good! There were more fish out there.

Within 10 casts the water bulged around my new friend’s wet fly. If he hooks another I’ll know there is no God, I thought rather churlishly. After five more casts I hadn’t found a taker. After 10 more casts I was in the zone. My sulphur yellow Thompson River Rat scurried toward shore and then was gone, replaced by a tailwalking apparition that ripped off 100 yards on its first run, changed gears and clocked another 100 yards on its second charge. Fifteen minutes later the fish, a female around 20 pounds, slugged it out in the shallows. As I furiously wound in line, she made one more leap, landed headfirst, threw the hook and was gone. The next day Thompson, the bird dog, and I went looking for chukar partridge. On Sunday we returned and, to my amazement, I hooked two more steelhead. Now, I was a man at peace.

The Thompson River flows for nearly 62 miles (100 kilometers) from its outlet on Kamloops Lake, in south-central British Columbia, to its meeting with the Fraser River at Lytton. The alchemy of Kamloops Lake stirs the more nutrient-rich South Thompson and the more sterile North Thompson into the ideally alkaline-balanced mainstem that hosts myriad insects and other aquatic forms of life, all food for the young rainbow trout and smolting steelhead, plus chinook, pink and coho salmon. While the Thompson is mostly noted for steelhead, it provides excellent resident rainbow fishing and unique options for chinook.

Because the Trans-Canada Highway follows the Thompson’s meandering course, it’s every angler’s river. Although public boat access is restricted to the provincial parks at Juniper Beach near Wallhachin and Gold Pan south of Spence’s Bridge, an angler on foot can fish virtually every mile of river. Most steelheaders stick with the lower portion of river from Spence’s Bridge to the mouth where the fish are most abundant.

Thompson steelheading, its proximity to the highway notwithstanding, is barely 60 years old. At one time, biologists declared the barrier at Hell’s Gate on the Fraser impassible to steelhead. Two gents coming home from the interior in 1946 stopped to fish and encountered a race of powerful fish, clearly not resident rainbows. Lee Straight, outdoor editor of The Vancouver Sun, heard of their exploits, checked out the river and the world of steelhead changed forever. Steelhead mecca in the desert was discovered and the pilgrimages began. At the time, reaching the Thompson required a two-day trip from the coast.

The river’s glory days were the mid-1980s when biologists counted 3,500 steelhead on spawning beds after the commercial fleet, comprising aboriginal and commercial fishermen, killed 5,000 fish; and the aboriginal food, social and ceremonial fishery killed another 5,000. At a limit of one steelhead a day, the Thompson’s sport-fishery killed 1,500 more. At that time, the run was at least 15,000 strong when it rounded the corner at Nitinat, just above the United States border at the south tip of Vancouver Island.