Columbia River

The Columbia below Hugh Keenleyside Dam is a tailwater on a scale few trout rivers match: about 55 km of huge, clear, cold water from Castlegar past Trail to the Washington border, fed from the bottom of the Arrow Lakes and joined at Castlegar by the Kootenay. Its wild rainbows average 40 to 45 cm, fish over 50 cm are common, and on summer evenings they rise by the dozen in the back eddies to caddis and mayflies. Walleye, smallmouth bass and northern pike live here too, none of them native, and white sturgeon are closed to all fishing.

This is boat water. The river is too big and deep to wade in most places, and the fish hold in back eddies 6 to 20 metres deep along the seams. A jet boat, a drift boat or a guide is the way in, launched at Brilliant, Genelle, Gyro Park in Trail or Beaver Creek. Spring, from March into May, is streamer and nymph season, when the biggest fish feed before they spawn. Grannom caddis show in late April and May, and once the high water drops in late June the summer caddis hatch takes over, with pale morning duns and blue-winged olives through July and August. Fall brings BWOs and October caddis. The dams decide the flow, and the river rarely colors from rain. Read the Birchbank gauge below the Kootenay: under about 1,700 m³/s the eddies set up well, and in early summer it can run past 3,500. Releases change by the hour, so a gravel bar you wade in the morning can be under water by afternoon.

The river is open all year below Keenleyside, free of the Region 4 spring closure and winter catch and release, and it fishes from early March into November. The one closure is at Robson, from the old ferry landing down to the CPR bridge, March 1 to June 30, where the rainbows spawn. A single barbless hook is the rule, as on every stream in the region. Castlegar and Trail have full services, and Spokane is about two and a half hours south.