Steelhead, salmon and trout
The Skeena country is one of the last great wild fish systems. Its rivers carry steelhead and salmon in from the sea, its lakes hold trout and char that rarely see a fly.
Oncorhynchus and Salvelinus
Wild fish, cold water.
- Steelhead
- Sea run rainbow trout. Returns to the river after years in the ocean
- Salmon
- Chinook, coho, sockeye, pink and chum run the Skeena system
- Rainbow trout
- The resident fish of the lakes and streams
- Char
- Bull trout and lake char in deep, cold water
- Grayling
- Arctic grayling in clear northern streams and lakes
- Water
- Glacier and snow fed, cold and clean all summer
Where they live
The lakes of the territory are reached only by floatplane. Trout and char live there all year, feeding in the shallows at ice-out and going deep in the warm weeks.
Steelhead and salmon belong to the big rivers. They come in from the Pacific, travel hundreds of kilometres upstream and spawn in the gravel where they were born.
A year on the water.
Spring
Ice leaves the lakes. Trout feed hard in the shallows. Steelhead spawn in the rivers.
Summer
Salmon enter the Skeena. The first summer steelhead follow them in.
Fall
The main steelhead season on the rivers. Coho run late. Char colour up.
Winter
Lakes freeze. Steelhead hold in the deep pools until spring.
How we fish.
Wild steelhead are released, every one. We fish single barbless hooks, keep the fish in the water and take the picture fast. On the lakes we keep a fish for the pan now and then and release the rest.
River fishing happens with local guides, under the licences and closures that apply that season. We tell you in the proposal exactly what is open.