Strong coffee and steelhead

With feisty fish and striking scenery, British Columbia’s Nass River has much to offer fl y-fishers – after that early-morning espresso

- RODDY HALL

Soon after meeting Derek Barber I realised that here was a man who pursues the important things in life with singleminded determination. These passions include being able to make a perfect espresso, or macchiato, on the banks of one of the best and most remote steelhead rivers in the world. While coffee was clearly important to Barber, the main reason we were here, an hour’s helicopter flight north of Smithers in British Columbia, Canada, was to fish for that superb migratory fish, the steelhead.

British and Irish fly-fishers have a strange addiction to anadromous fish. We all enjoy saltwater trips and the exciting freshwater fish of the southern hemisphere, such as golden dorado or tigerfish, but our trips to fish rivers for returning salmon or sea-trout are more of a compulsion than anything else. Here we have something in common with our friends on the west coast of the USA and Canada. For a long time they have bucked the North American trend for single-handed fly rods and have headed, Spey rods in hand, to the remote rivers of British Columbia to chase steelhead – sea-run fish that often grow to in excess of 20lb, fight hard and fast, and which are characterised by a pink stripe along the lateral line, similar to their close, non-migratory relation, the rainbow trout.

Steelhead fishing became popular with European fly-fishers 20-odd years ago and many people now make the annual pilgrimage to British Columbia (BC) to fish the great river systems, such as the Skeena. Towns such as Terrace and Smithers are the Canadian version of Kelso, where a double–handed fly rod and a pair of waders are almost compulsory.