The valley has everything, bears (black and grizzly), moose, elk, deer, eagles, salmon, steelhead, bull,rainbow and cutthroat trout. It is famous for it's bull trout which can be over 10 lbs. At the start of August, the largest sockeye salmon in the world enter this river and they were definitely in the system though notoriously hard to catch.
Given the glacier/groundwater source of the cool water the fish would be in two to three feet of water on the long runs and in deep pools and would still hit the fly at 2:00 pm in the brightest hottest part of the day. Sun screen was a must and when the heat cranked up it was the shade that beckoned us to rest, not the slowdown in the fishing!
As river levels will continue to drop, passability by jet boat will continue to get tricky. This year the river braided at about 8 km to the extend that it took a really good run to get the jet boats up on a high plain to clear the riffles before finding deeper water. After that, biking/walking/wading and drift boating will take over till the rains return in Sept/Oct.
The really good news is that the test catches in the Fraser River have gone up to 30 to 70+ Sockeye and a decent number of Chinook so the Department of Fisheries is opening the sport Sockeye fishery on Wednesday, August 6, 2014 in the middle Fraser and Harrison Rivers. The Fraser is open in all of region 2 and the Harrison is open from the confluence with the Fraser to the Hwy 7 bridge. This is until further notice and means that it will be mayhem on the river as boats and bottom bouncers line the gravel bars and fight for a spot to catch their two sockeye per person per day limits. Time to get out there and get fishing!!!!