The second week in August, 1992, my wife and I went on a 5 1/2 day guided fishing float down the Blackwater (West Road) River which is about 300 miles NNE of Vancouver between Quesnel and Prince George. The float was organized by The Blackwater Company owned by Ron Thompson and is promoted and sold by Kaufmann's in Seattle, The Fly Shop in Redding, CA, and probably some other places. The cost per person in 1992 was $2,195 plus $160 for fishing licenses.
In summary, we had an enjoyable vacation and some good rainbow trout fishing, but compared to our previous trip down the Middle Fork or to fishing lodges we've visited since, this trip was very poorly organized and certainly not worth this kind of money. The fishing was considerably better than the Middle Fork, but everything else was much worse. The guides were good and knowledgeable about fishing, flora, and fauna, but only one had worked this river in previous years. The owner did not come on the trip and none of the guides were given any apparent leadership role. Camping equipment was of mixed quality and repair. No dry bags were provided.
The camp sites and food were prepared by an untrained 20 year old, chain smoking, part time logger and his 16 year old helper. Little attention was given to detail in setting up the camp, and except for what came out of cans and jars the food was uniformly bad; I mean bad...burned and raw at the same time with a liberal sprinkling of wood chips, dirt, soot, and who knows what else. Salads were prepared first and left uncovered on a table or occasionally the ground as fly food for half an hour or more before serving. We ran out of sugar on the first day and milk on the next to last day. Drinking water was limited and came from a local spring instead for being carried from town. There was ice only to pack the food.
I called the Thompson's three times during the summer, asking questions about the trip and trying to decide exactly what to pack. I never spoke with Ron, but his wife sent me last year's flyer and assured me that our fairly light food preferences would be no problem. She made the trip sound really special: great food and everything provided except fishing equipment. She mentioned that they carried a port-a-potty and set up a portable shower each night. OK, that sounded too good to be true, but then $400 per day per person ought to buy some creature comforts. With this buildup and their "what to bring" list, it seemed unnecessary, but while packing I threw in a couple of towels and an assortment of garbage bags and zip locks. That precaution saved our trip!
We arrived in Vancouver late Friday night lugging two large duffel bags, a carry-on suitcase, a small backpack, a video camera, and four rods. A night in a local motel and we were back at the airport early Saturday morning for the only flight of the day to Quesnel. While waiting for the flight in Vancouver we met the other members of the floating party; easily recognizable as the people clutching fly rod cases. The combined party consisted of three families; a total of seven people, two of whom were women. Together with some locals, we climbed aboard one of those high wing, two propeller, commuter planes for the short jump to Quesnel. Peanuts, a coke, an hour of looking at BC mountains, and we touched down in Quesnel on a short strip with hay bales dotting the fields on both sides.
Quesnel is a logging town at the junction of the Quesnel and Frazer rivers and most of the surrounding hills show the scars of clear cutting. A couple of pulp mills give much of the area an unpleasant odor, but it was mostly absent from the downtown area on the days we were there. There seem to be a lot of fishing and hiking options in the area but we were too travel weary to investigate. Our accommodations at the recently completed Tower Inn were very nice, although our reservations couldn't be found. The town has a compact and walkable shopping area, a very nice river walk park and a foot bridge over the Frazer, so we spent most of the day wandering around. The food was good (fish and chips and Chinese) although non-smoking areas were not the norm. A cold front swept through town during the afternoon heralded by a sudden cold downpour and a hasty switch from shirt sleeves to sweat shirts.
Ron Thompson arrived Sunday morning at 7 AM, threw our luggage into the back of a wet pickup, and packed all of us (eight people total) into the double cab, despite the fact that one of the other guys was 7' tall and 300 pounds and that I'm 6'4" myself. Feeling like sardines, we bounced over gravel roads for an hour and a half to the jump-off point only to find that preparations had barely begun for getting underway. Ron whiled away the time writing out fishing licenses and charging us $80 each despite the fact that all of the literature said that they were to be provided. But everyone wanted to get on the river and start fishing so we all forked over the money. Fortunately, my wife had brought along the checkbook cause in the woods they weren't equipped to take American Express or Visa.
Around 11 AM, the boats were finally in the water, and we were ready to start. I was expecting drift boats, but to my surprise there was one drift boat and three rubber rafts in the water and our luggage was being piled onto one of the rafts. While I finally woke up to reality and began to ask some questions, my wife had the foresight to commandeer the drift boat. (The other guys were malpractice lawyers and she's an MD so her conscience was clear.) Thirty minutes later, questions unresolved, half our gear on a raft, and us in the drift boat, we pushed off into the river. To my surprise, good ol' Ron was waving good bye from shore!
After this inauspicious start, the trip began to improve. Chris Leigh, the guide who ran our drift boat turned out to be excellent, and although they normally switch everyone around each day, the size (weight and number) of the other families dictated that we stay with him in the drift boat while they continued on the rafts.
The river is typically about 100 ft wide with a bottom of round rocks mostly in the 6" to 2' diameter range. The rocks made wading difficult even with felt soled shoes. The flow rate is moderate in most places, and in August the water temperature was moderate enough to wade wet and to swim, at least when the sun was above the trees. The first night was cold near freezing, and we slept in sweat shirts and socks in the lightweight sleeping bags provided. The tent was large and roomy, but most nights I had a leaky air mattress and woke early. Most mornings were cool enough that the sweatshirts felt good around the campsite, but short sleeves were needed before noon on most days. On a couple of mornings it was quite cool and I was happy we brought our lightweight waders along. We had a light rain one night and slept with everything in the tent.
We carried 4, 5, 6, and 8 weight rods and all but the 8 were appropriate. We fished generally large (8 to 12) caddis flies and hair stimulators although one afternoon we ran into a hatch that had trout jumping out of the water to snatch a medium size gray fly (how's that for specific) on the wing. Here we were able to get their attention only with a sort of gray-wulff, blue-dun pattern the guide had tied on what I judged to be a size 12 hook. This immediately drew up three large fish that had ignored a caddis fly for 15 minutes or more. Dave's hopper was also a very productive pattern on the last two days of the trip. The guides encourage barbless and catch and release, but I believe there is actually a two fish/day limit on the river. No one kept any fish on this trip except long enough to take pictures.
The river is billed as a dry fly stream, and we mostly fished it that way; but nearly half of the takes were underwater on the reel-in or on an underwater swing across the current. The largest fish I caught had a nymph hook already lodged in its mouth. We did about half our fishing from the boat and the other half from the bank or wading.
The river has a large mineral content and a thick white foam builds up along the bank in the tail water of some rapids. I would never have thought to fish this cover without our guide's suggestion, but it turned out to be some of the most productive water on the river. Any sort of large fly dropped directly onto the foam rarely failed to draw an immediate strike.
The largest fish I landed was a 16 1/2" rainbow, and my wife had a considerably larger fish on for one spectacular jump. We had several fish in the 15" range, but most were between 10" and 14". The small ones were the most active when hooked. There were plenty of fish; enough that we got several strikes and a couple of the larger fish on video.
These fish were highly excitable, and on a couple of occasions I noticed a second trout chasing after the fly in a hooked trout's mouth. On the last day, while we were moving quickly to the take-out point, I missed my last chance at another large fish that was undoubtedly exhibiting this same feeding frenzy behavior. I tossed the large hopper into a patch of foam where a small trout grabbed it, raced into the current, jumped, and shook free right next to the boat. A much larger fish immediately grabbed the hopper in a vicious and unexpected strike and dove under the boat. Despite my best efforts to hold him and avoid boat and oars, he shook loose before I could get him back to the surface, so my only memory is the fleeting glimpse during that slashing strike.
Except for one very narrow gorge where the rafts and boat were unloaded and tilted on their sides to clear a large rock, the river changed little over the thirty miles of the six day trip. The banks were generally lined with 20 to 30 year old conifers with a few mid sized cottonwoods mixed in. One area of a few hundred yards was clear cut right down to the water. The undergrowth was thick, some of it a sort of wild rose with thorns. There were a lot of insects on the water and a few flies in camp, but only the occasional mosquito or biting fly. We saw several bald eagles, ospreys, kingfishers, a blue heron, and a few mink and beaver. Moose droppings covered much of the ground.
Not a bad trip, and with what I now know we could carry supplies to make up the deficiencies, but I'm annoyed enough that I wouldn't go again under this management.
Oh yes, that portable shower? It turned out that our guide had brought along his own personal 5 gallon solar shower, and was nice enough to offer to share it with us on two nights.