Story by Mark Hume with Photography by John Buchanan Feast or Famine for Pacific Salmon. One year rivers on the West Coast of Canada seem to be empty of salmon, the next they are so full commercial boats are being allowed to drop their nets in the estuaries. So what gives? Is there a shortage of salmon on the Pacific Coast, or a great abundance? The complicated answer – and there are no easy answers when it comes to salmon – is that both conditions often exist at the same time and in the same place. The Fraser River, which winds down from the British Columbia interior to empty into the Pacific through the heart of Metro Vancouver, is a case in point. In August of 2013 there were so few sockeye salmon in the Fraser that all fishing – sport, native and commercial – was banned. But by September there were so many pink salmon entering the river – an estimated 26 million – that commercial fish processing plants were overwhelmed and sports anglers were talking about 30 and 40 salmon days. Scientists say the massive return of one species – pinks – coming on the heels of a disastrous run of another – sockeye – is linked to a dramatic shift in ocean conditions. And it may point to big runs of chum and sockeye returning in 2014, to be followed by a big Chinook run in 2015. For some people the sudden pulse of pink salmon raised questions about the possible role of a controversial experiment that took place in 2012, when the Haida Salmon Restoration Corp. dumped iron material in the ocean, stimulating plankton growth. To some that ocean fertilization experiment was reckless science at its worst and amounted to polluting the...

The Trout Bohemia, a new book  reviewed by Peter McMullan “Every trout fisherman must dream sometimes of New Zealand, where the great rainbow trout come up on the shallow bars in the big lakes, and everyone who knows and loves Pacific salmon must sometimes wish to see what Chinooks look like down there, so many thousands of miles from home in a country where winter is summer and summer winter and coastal currents do nothing to help the migration.” – The writer, Roderick Haig-Brown, the book his beloved A River Never Sleeps, published in 1946, with the extract drawn from the chapter entitled November: Before I Die. Rod Haig-Brown’s sudden death, at 68, in October, 1976 meant he never did see New Zealand, never did have the opportunity in his later years to experience trout fishing that remains, by and large, as good as it can be to this day. The challenge, as New Zealand author Derek Grzelewski knows all too well, will be to protect, to enhance those fisheries in the years ahead. As it happens I was just finishing yet another encounter with a well-used, early edition of A River Never Sleeps when the mail man delivered a much-anticipated package from overseas, in it my signed copy of Derek Grzelewski’s The Trout Bohemia Fly-fishing travels in New Zealand, the anticipated sequel to his widely acclaimed first book, The Trout Diaries A year of fly-fishing in New Zealand, which appeared in 2011. In January of this year (2013) I had the good fortune to meet Derek when we made our way to the South Island town of Wanaka on the banks of Lake Hawea. The Trout Bohemia was just around the corner and he was rightly excited at the prospect, at what the future...

Story by Mark Hume with photos by Craig Orr, Steven Morrow and Skeena Wild Put some time in on a West Coast river and pretty soon you get to know how the runs of fish are moving through it. And when a run suddenly turns off, when a “hole” opens in the river and seems to swallow every fish in it, you know that the only explanation is a disaster. Either a landslide has blocked the river – or fisheries managers have allowed commercial nets to be dropped. That’s what happened on British Columbia’s famed Dean River this summer, when what looked like a good steelhead run suddenly stopped, cold, stone dead. The end of the run coincided with a massive chum fishery which the federal department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) opened on the central coast in what is known as Area 8. Included in that area are narrow channels and inlets that are the approach waters for steelhead running back to the Dean, one of the most fabled steelhead rivers on the planet. “There were fish coming in, and then all of a sudden it was zero,” said Joe Saysell, a retired Vancouver Island fishing guide who has been taking summer trips to fish on the Dean for the past 30 years. Joe was on the river in early August, pumped by the almost perfect dry fly conditions, when the chum fishery opened. “It was so dramatic. It was like a switch clicked and the [steelhead] run ended,” he said. “I’ve never seen it so void of fish.” Joe camps out on the river, but he said he felt for those who had come so far and were paying top dollar to stay at one of the three lodges on the river. “People...

Story and Photography by Peter McMullan Steelhead Season: We talk and think a lot about steelhead in British Columbia but seldom acknowledge the remarkable diversity of the species. For example, how many countries can say with certainty that Atlantic salmon can be caught on the fly every month of the year? Few if any I believe. In B.C. you can, although you will rack up a good few miles meeting the 12-month steelhead challenge. It starts, for me at least, on Vancouver Island in January, February and March in pursuit of winter-run fish in rivers like the Stamp, Cowichan, Gold and Salmon. These are the ones I know best and there are others too, smaller more intimate Island streams, and lesser known for that reason, which still produce more than the occasional fish. Back in the 1970s I did well with gear on both the Nanaimo and the Cowichan, a river I first experienced in 1954, but the Nanaimo River, for whatever reason, has failed badly over the past decade, as have such formerly productive waters as the Big and Little Qualicum and the Englishman. Now only remnant stocks remain and should be cherished in hopes of recovery. Happily the Cowichan has proved to be the exception and still definitely holds it own. These winter run fish are not easily taken on the fly. Water temperatures are well down and flows can be high and strong. This adds to the difficulties facing the angler determined to do it the hard way with a swung fly on a fast sink tip rather than with a bottom-bounced lure fashioned from metal or plastic.  Using roe is simply not a subject to be discussed on these pages, smelly stuff that I for one would ban completely but then what...

Photography by Rafal Gerszak with a story by Mark Hume Every spring the trucks head out from five hatcheries located around British Columbia to recharge some of the 200,000 lakes and 750,000 kms of streams with new stocks of trout. The Fraser Valley Trout Hatchery, just outside Vancouver, is one of the busiest, putting over 860,000 rainbows, steelhead and cutthroat into more than 150 different water bodies each year. These aren’t bedraggled hatchery fish with worn tails, but fish derived directly from wild stock. Some of the fish will be caught soon after they have been released, but others will survive for years, reproducing naturally and with luck, growing to trophy size. Some are triploids, fish which have effectively been sterilized so that all their energy is directed into growth. The released fish range from fry, that are smaller than a finger, to adult “catchables” that are big enough to be taken home and eaten. Steve Arnold, manager of the Fraser Valley hatchery, says B.C.’s hatchery operators take a lot of pride in producing healthy, beautiful fish that are genetically indistinguishable from wild trout. “All of our fish eggs come from wild stock,” he said, explaining how the hatchery gathers eggs each spring by live-trapping adult trout at a few special “brood lakes.” Basically wild trout are intercepted on their way to the spawning grounds and their eggs are redirected to hatcheries, where they are fertilized and hatched. The young fish are mostly released at 9 to 12 months of age. “So they are essentially wild fish. We’ve got total genetic diversity,” said Mr. Arnold. The stocking program, run by the non-profit Freshwater Fisheries Society of BC, produces over eight million trout, steelhead, char and kokanee salmon each year, releasing them into about 800 bodies...

Story by Mark Hume with Photography courtesy Uncage the Soul D-Day Trout: When Frank Moore landed on the beaches of Normandy on the north coast of France on June 6, 1944, he was like a lot of young soldiers under the command of General Eisenhower. He wanted to fight, to win – and to stay alive. But he also had something else on his mind as he pushed inland – those beautiful big trout that he saw when he looked down into the rivers he crossed as a 21-year-old soldier. The image of those fish stayed with Mr. Moore for 69 years and when he mentioned to John Waller his dream of one day returning to France to revisit Utah Beach, and look for the trout he had to pass up because a war was raging, a documentary project was born. “Tough as nails, gentle as a poet, and determined as a badger,” is how Mr. Waller, of Uncage the Soul Video Production, describes Mr. Moore, now 90, who built and for a long-time ran the world famous Steamboat Inn, on the North Umpqua River. Mr. Waller is in the process of shooting a documentary, Frank Moore: Mending the Line, which will tell the story of a remarkable man and his long love affair with fly fishing. A lot of the video has been shot already in Oregon – but at this writing there was a big piece missing: Mr. Moore’s return to France to drop a fly on those big fish, if he can find them again. Mr. Waller said a small doc team, which is volunteering its time, plans to take Mr. Moore and his wife, Jeanne, back to the rivers of Normandy, “this time armed not with a gun, but with a...

Story by Peter McMullan with photography by Craig Somerville Fishing for New Zealand Trout: Bridesdale Farm, near Queenstown, sits at the end of a long and winding driveway on high ground overlooking the Kawarau River, which empties out of Lake Wakitipu, the third largest in New Zealand. A decade after Daphne and I originally visited, we returned to spend a month in Fran and King Allen’s self-catering cottage. We were expecting summer weather, but on the first night snow fell on the Remarkables, a towering range of mountains that stood close by, while heavy rain, often accompanied by blasts of thunder, filled the local rivers and streams. The fishing would be challenging, but with persistence and the help of two outstanding companions, some big trout would be found and much beautiful water fished. I have been keeping fishing diaries of one sort and another since 1951.  What follows is a partial account of our trip to South Island. Jan. 1: Long distance travel made easy. Direct 14-hour flight from Vancouver to Auckland followed by a two-hour internal leg to Queenstown. Jan. 2: Surprise  . . . overnight snow on the mountains that rise steeply from the river valley behind our cottage. Not at all what we expected to start a high summer new year so far from our Vancouver Island home. Jan. 3: I had the use of the Allens’ 8’ dingy for the month so tried Lake Hayes, 10 minutes away. Too much wind and, as I later discovered, the lake’s usual clarity was being impacted by a summer algae bloom. So no fish seen or touched on a variety of flies fished on a sink tip. Jan. 4: Drove to Wanaka (pop.5000) over the Crown Range on the highest paved road in the...

Story by Mark Hume New research may have solved the mystery of how salmon migrate across vast stretches of ocean to locate their natal streams. And the findings raise concerns about how hatcheries and the use of coded-wire tags might be adversely affecting the ability of fish to navigate and find their way home. Researchers studying the movement of sockeye salmon from British Columbia’s Fraser River say the fish are imprinted with a magnetic map when they are juveniles. They use that map to read the earth’s geomagnetic field, which guides them back from the North Pacific, to the river mouth. “Our paper clearly shows…very small changes in magnetic strength and intensity correspond to changes we see in the migration routes of the fish,” said Nathan Putman, a post-doctoral researcher at the University of Oregon. “To find their way back home across thousands of kilometers of ocean, salmon imprint on the magnetic field that exists where they first enter the sea as juveniles. Upon reaching maturity, they seek the coastal location with the same magnetic field,” he said. Dr. Putman’s team looked at Fraser River sockeye because of an unusual trait they have. With Vancouver Island blocking a direct route to the Fraser River from the Gulf of Alaska, migrating fish must choose whether to return through Queen Charlotte Strait, in the North, or through the Strait of Juan de Fuca, in the South. Scientists and fishermen have long speculated on environmental factors, such as ocean temperatures, that might affect that choice. But Dr. Putman found there is a strong correlation between the route chosen by the fish and the geomagnetic field, which naturally drifts because of the movement of the Earth’s liquid outer core. “We found that the proportion of salmon using each...

Story and photography by First Lieutenant Edwin L. Kennedy, US Army [This article was written by Brigadier General Kennedy, then a First Lieutenant, while assigned to Turkey in 1952-1955. It was discovered in a file folder by his son, also a retired Army officer, who edited the article and added the photographs from scanned 35 mm slides. Brigadier Gen. Kennedy, a WWII, Korean War and Vietnam war veteran, retired from active duty in 1979 and currently resides in Florida. We present his story here because it provides a glimpse not only to fishing in another country, but also to fishing in another time. – The Editors.] Standing knee-deep in the swift, clear water, I paused momentarily before making my first cast. In the instant before the lure sailed out over the stream, thought to myself, “Of all the things I’ve seen and done in Turkey, this trip surely tops the list.” The fact that I was fishing was, in itself, not uncustomary, but trout fishing—and in Turkey—that was something I had never imagined could be done. Everything had happened so quickly that until then I hadn’t stopped to realize that the entire trip had been unusual, even the way in which it had come about. It started one hot day early in June while I was watching the approach of a plane load of VIPs and wishing that it would hurry and land. I wanted to get out of the sun and back to the coolness of my office in town, which in this case was Ankara, Turkey, where I was assigned to the Joint American Military Mission for Aid to Turkey, “Who’s going fishing with me this weekend?” The voice came from behind me, and though it was none of my business, I couldn’t help wondering who planned to go fishing with whom, and where they planned to fish. The mention of...

Review by Mark Hume with Photography by Travis Lowe Travis Lowe’s new film, Thai One On, isn’t like any fly fishing trip you’ve ever been on before. Unless, that is, taking part in ritual sacrifices, eating giant cockroaches and riding elephants into the seething jungle are part of your normal angling experience. “I guess the thing I set out to do was to make a film that was completely different than anything else that was out there,” Travis said recently when I asked him about the narrative arc he’d chosen for this story He wanted something that stood out in a field cluttered with too much ‘fish porn’. And boy, did he succeed. Thai One On follows three anglers from the Montana Fly Company, who set out to catch the mighty Mahseer, a kind of super carp, in the Mae Ngao, or River of Reflection, in northern Thailand. At first they are just thinking how much fun it will be, but pretty soon they find themselves working with local Karen villagers around Chiang Mai, to protect a dwindling species. The guys from Montana bring to impoverished third world villagers a modern conservation ethic, and the promise of a sports angling economy based on the alien concept of a catch-and-release fishery. In return they get enlightenment – and learn how to put a fatal curse on poachers by cutting the head off a rooster. During the journey they not only fall in love with the Mahseer, and its explosive surface strikes, but also with the Thai people and their rich culture. They also get so desperate to crack the Mahseer, that they throw everything at them – including the aptly named Cherry Bomb, and in one great sequence, the dangly bits from a restaurant table...

Interview by Mark Hume with Photography by Kris Keller and Travis Lowe Travis Lowe, a television news cameraman based in Kelowna, British Columbia, is one of the emerging film-makers who is pushing the fly fishing genre in new directions. His latest work, Thai One On, reviewed elsewhere on this site, is featured in the 2013 F3T Film Festival, which is touring 150 cities in North America. It is a multi-layered story about the journey three anglers from the Montana Fly Company make in pursuit of the mighty Mahseer, in the jungles of northern Thailand. It’s either that, or a story about how they survive Bangkok, learn how to tie the Cherry Bomb, and get schooled in the art of voodoo witchcraft. Either way, it is one heck of a yarn. In this Q & A with Mark Hume, editor of ariverneversleeps.com, Travis talks about the making of Thai One On and his philosophy about truthful, dramatic documentaries that have real stories to tell. Q: Tell me about the film competition. A: F3T. There are three film competitions in the world. F3T is the first one, based out of Boulder, Colorado. It does 150 dates across the U.S. and Canada throughout the year. It will be viewed by 40,000 people or so. It’s a competition that goes on every year, of the best films. Q: How do you get in there? A: You apply. They have a deadline in November. They have a screening with a bunch of people and decide which ones will go in. Last year I had a film called Canvas Fish which didn’t make it . . . there wasn’t a lot of fishing in that film. It was about an artist . . . but they really liked the film...

Story and Photography by Bob Salisbury  Last year, the month of April was amazingly dry in Tyrone, Northern Ireland. Almost no rain had fallen the blue skies and unusually high temperatures prevailed for weeks on end. Springtime rivers, normally in full flow at this time of year, became very low and water meadows which always squelched to the step began to bake and crack. For weeks, smoke billowed from the crests of the Sperrin mountains as wildfires raged through the tinder-dry heather and the pale Irish complexions of the people in the local town had been  transformed by the heat wave into boiled lobsters. “If this is global warming I’m all for it!” said the optimists. ”For once we’ll get a decent summer.” “This is our summer” countered the pessimists.” You mark my words, it’ll rain all June, July and August”. They were right as it turned out and 2012 did eventually become, for the whole of the British Isles, the wettest year since records began. But for the fisherman, the unseasonal heat wave in the Spring brought an unexpected bonus along the river banks and my son Ed and I decided to take full advantage of it. Hawthorn blossoms were magnificent everywhere and hawthorn flies hatched in huge numbers. Clouds of these ungainly insects, with their characteristic hanging legs  hovered over the stream and the trout were quick to take advantage whenever they were blown on to the water and carried downstream. Fish were clearly enjoying the feast and as we watched from a bridge on the road, slashing rises and gentle ‘dippling’ trout disturbed the surface almost continuously as they hoovered up the fallen hawthorn flies. Most fishing outings start as dreams. In the minds eye we will be the first anglers...