Every spring,
walleye leave the Peace and swim up the Beatton, a river that winds out of the muskeg north of Fort St. John, and by June most of them have dropped back down. On the valley walls above its lower bends grows prickly-pear cactus, among the most northerly anywhere, on dry outcrops along the valley.
It is a long river with four parts. It rises near Pink Mountain, where the Alaska Highway crosses it as a small stream. It then wanders east and south for a very long way through boreal forest and muskeg, touched here and there by oilfield roads. Two big tributaries, the Blueberry and then the Doig, join in the third part and make it a real river. The last part, below the place where Montney Creek comes in, winds down its own valley to the Peace downstream of Fort St. John.
Start in the lower valley. Walleye,
northern pike and
goldeye all use this stretch, and it is where the cactus grows, on outcrops up to about 30 km above the mouth. Cecil Lake Road crosses the river about twenty minutes east of town, and one cactus stand is reached by a short trail off that road. At the mouth itself a small provincial park can only be reached by boat, by paddling down the Beatton or along the Peace.
The middle river, from the Blueberry down past the Doig, is the likeliest place to look for grayling. The Beatton system raises a good share of the
Arctic grayling in this part of the Peace, and the gravel runs near the tributary mouths are the obvious place to start. Milligan Creek Road and the farm roads north of town reach it.
The long upper river through the muskeg is for the curious, reached by the 126 and 135 roads among others. Little is said about what lives up there, so treat it as unproven water: whatever you find is wild, and the river is yours to work out.
The walleye know how far up the Beatton they go each spring. Nobody else seems to, and the river past the last road is where to find out.
Water and habitat
The Beatton is a soft-banked plains river: clay valley walls that slide, meanders, slow pools and long flat glides, with gravel riffles where tributaries drop in. In the lower river, walleye sit in the slower, deeper water off the main current, along outside bends and in eddies below creek mouths, and move up onto the edges in low light. Pike hold in slack backwaters and weedy side channels where they can ambush. Grayling want moving water over gravel: the head of a run, the seam below a riffle.
How to fish it
For walleye, use a 6- or 7-weight with a sink-tip and one weighted baitfish streamer, a Clouser in chartreuse and white or olive and white. Cast across into the deep edge of a bend, let it sink, and strip slowly along the bottom. Dusk and dark are the best hours. If nothing takes, go deeper and slower before you change the fly; in coloured water, try a brighter one.
For pike, swap to a big streamer on a bite tippet and strip it fast past weed edges and down the length of a backwater.
Goldeye rise to small dries in the evening; a size 14 Elk Hair Caddis drifted along a seam will show you if they are there. If they refuse it, go down a size.
For grayling in the gravel runs, a size 12
Humpy or Stimulator finds them; change to a size 14 or 16 Adams if they rise and miss. Wait for the line to tighten before you set.
Regulations
The Beatton has no listing of its own in the Peace region tables, so the regional and provincial rules apply. Use a single barbless hook, no bait, and one fly on the line, all year. Every fish caught in the river must be released from 1 April to 15 May, so spring walleye are catch-and-release until then. After that, walleye may be kept at 3 a day, only 1 over 70 cm; northern pike at 3 a day, only 1 over 90 cm; and goldeye at 10 a day; possession is two daily quotas. Release grayling, and check the regulations before you think about keeping one. Check for in-season changes before you go.