Cheakamus River

The Cheakamus starts at Cheakamus Lake in Garibaldi Provincial Park, runs past Whistler's Function Junction into Daisy Lake, then drops through a canyon below BC Hydro's Daisy Lake Dam to Paradise Valley and the Squamish. The dam sends much of the river through a tunnel to a powerhouse on the Squamish, so the lower river runs clearer and steadier than the glacial Squamish beside it. In 2005 a CN derailment spilled caustic soda into the canyon and killed most of the fish in the lower river. The river has come back. Its steelhead and trout are wild, and the coho are helped by the Tenderfoot hatchery.

The lower river is the steelhead water. Wild winter steelhead come from March into May, and anglers swing flies through the long runs of Paradise Valley. Coho come from October into December and chum from late October, with rainbow trout and bull trout feeding behind them. Read the Brackendale gauge: the river fishes best between about 12 and 45 m³/s. It reads 20 to 30 most of the winter, rises with snowmelt in May and June, and a fall storm can push it past 100 for a day or two. The canyon between the dam and Paradise Valley is steep and hard to reach.

Above Daisy Lake, near Whistler, the Cheakamus is a small trout river with rainbow trout and bull trout, best in late summer and fall once the snowmelt drops. The Millar Creek gauge reads that reach. Bait is banned all year, and only hatchery coho may be kept, 1 a day across the whole Squamish system. Pacific Angler in Vancouver guides the Squamish Valley rivers.