By late August the snowmelt has run out of the Chilcotin. The plateau around it is dry country and the nights are starting to bite. A river that ran cold and high through the melt settles into water you can read. Its rainbows and bull trout are wild fish, and they run to a couple of pounds.
The name comes from the Tŝilhqot’in for “ochre river people”, and the shape is simple: one confluence cuts the river in two. Above it the Chilcotin is the smaller stream, rising at Itcha Lake and winding east across the plateau with Highway 20 never far away. Just west of Alexis Creek a tributary pours in from the south, the Chilko, carrying more water than the river it joins. From there the Chilcotin is big and silty, and it falls through a string of canyons to the Fraser. The two halves even keep different seasons, so the month decides which one you fish.
The upper river is the gentler of the two, a plateau stream you can cover on foot. Start around Redstone, where a second tributary, the Chilanko, comes in. It is also the half that keeps fishing into autumn, after the lower river has shut for the year.
The lower river is the one people know, and the easy way to meet it is from the campground in Bull Canyon, a few kilometres below the confluence, where a two-kilometre trail follows the bank and the river comes cold and quick out of the rock. Downstream, past a limestone bluff below Hanceville, the river turns to rapids and deeper canyon. The Tŝilhqot’in name for the last big one, Farwell Canyon, means “place of landslides”, and in 2024 a slide just upstream of it dammed the whole river for days.
Below Farwell the river runs one last canyon into the brown Fraser. Back up the highway, the clear Chilko leads south to its lake and its own big rainbows.
Fish in this water
Each fish is rated by its strongest evidence. A rating says how sure we are a fish is here, not how many there are, whether it is worth fishing for or whether you may keep it.
Confirmed
Recorded on this water in the last 15 years, or named for it by a fishery agency, its fishing rules or a fishing publication.
Above the Chilko you are fishing a modest river through ranch and plateau country, reachable at points along Highway 20. Below it, the river carries glacial silt and gets muddier as it passes the ranches, and the current is heavy. In coloured water the trout can’t see far and won’t fight the main flow for long, so they sit where it softens: the seam where a rapid fans out into a run, the inside of a bend, eddies behind boulders and the slow water along a bluff. Fish the first few metres out from the bank before you try to reach the middle.
Fish and forage
Resident rainbows and bull trout are the fish to come for. Chinook, coho and sockeye run the system, and its steelhead are a genetically distinct population assessed as endangered. On Big Creek, a tributary of the lower river that holds rainbows and mountain whitefish, the rainbows feed heavily on big golden stoneflies and small olive mayflies, and yellow sallies have been seen in the main Chilcotin channel nearby. That is borrowed from the creek, but it is the best guide to what the main river’s trout are eating. Bull trout eat other fish.
When to fish it
The river above the Chilko is closed from 1 April to 30 June. Below the Chilko it is closed from 1 October to 10 June. So from 11 June to the end of the month only the lower river is fishable, from Bull Canyon down, and that early water is high and pushy.
Through July, August and September both halves can be fished. Late August and September are the pick, once the levels taper.
Above the Chilko the rules list no closure from July through March; check in-season changes before you go. October around Redstone is the reward for staying late, with frost at night and the lower river shut. From 1 October no hook may be more than 15 mm from point to shank, so tie your stonefly on a smaller hook.
How to fish it
Work one fly at a time. From July, start with a weighted golden stonefly nymph, dead-drifted along the seams at the bottom of each run, and keep it near the bottom. If the fish ignore it, change to a small Pheasant Tail in the same water; on a bright afternoon when sallies are about, switch to a small yellow dry and fish the soft edges. For a bull trout, swing a dark streamer through the deeper slots below the rapids.
On the upper river, cover water on foot: a few short drifts through each run, then walk on to the next. On the lower river, stand on the inside of the bend and work the near seam before wading any deeper. The current here is not forgiving.
Access and safety
Highway 20 runs west from Williams Lake and gives the access to both halves. Bull Canyon Provincial Park, six kilometres west of Alexis Creek, is the only provincial campground on the highway between Williams Lake and Tweedsmuir Park; its gates are locked from 16 September to 14 May. At Hanceville the road south crosses the river on a bridge with a boat ramp, the usual start for rafts. You may float the river in a boat, but you can’t angle from a powered one, and the rapids below run to Class IV.
At Farwell Canyon the banks below the bridge were closed to public access after the 2024 slides, and fresh cracks have since opened downstream. Check the current access order before you walk down. Grizzlies turn up anywhere here, so carry bear spray. Much of the bank is ranch or Tŝilhqot’in land; ask before you cross it. The country is dry and fire prone, and the side creeks drain cattle range, so bring your own water.
Regulations
Region 5 rules apply. The whole river has a bait ban, and streams in the region take a single barbless hook all year. The hook-size limit runs from 1 October to 31 May.
If you keep fish, the regional daily quota is 5 trout and char, but no more than 2 from streams, 1 over 50 cm and 1 bull trout. Below the Chilko no trout or char under 30 cm may be kept. Bull trout from streams must be released from 1 August to 31 October, and all steelhead must be released.
Steelhead fisheries in the Chilcotin watershed may be closed because Fraser steelhead are declining. If a steelhead opening is announced for the lower river, that reach is Class II classified water from 1 October to 31 May and a Steelhead Stamp is mandatory. Salmon are managed by Fisheries and Oceans Canada. Check the current synopsis and in-season changes before you fish.