Serge Reads the Water Photo by Louis Cahill
This video is from a trip several years ago.
I recently saw a very different Dean River. The river was as low as I’ve ever seen it at the end of this June. The fishing was still great and you will be reading more about that trip soon.
You will be reading more in the coming weeks about my trip to British Columbia to fish the Dean River. In every post I will likely mention the tough fishing conditions. In order for you to really understand what I mean by “tough fishing conditions” I put together this little video.
I have never seen a river so crazy high. The fact that we fished the very next day and the fact that we caught fish that week is a testament to what a truly remarkable river the Dean is. I can’t wait to go back but I hope I have better conditions.
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That is not the Dean, it’s the Death River.
The waters of no return.
On days when the water is a little high, you have to look for the soft edges and fish close to the shore. The key is to use bigger flies, maybe a sinktip instead of a floating line, and letting the fly get near the bottom before you swing it into the shore.
. . . . then again, maybe it was day for tying one on!
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Write about how you brought fish to hand once they were below you when you hooked up later in the week. It was probably a track meet.
Where do the fish go in a situation like this?
When a river gets blown out like this there are always safe hydrolocks for fish to take cover. Think of it as one river running on top of another. In the case of steelhead and salmon on this specific trip, they simply stayed in fjord at the mouth of the river until the water dropped. We caught all of our fish that week very. Ear the salt.
Nothin better than catching fish on high water in my book…