From mid-August into September,
chinook that have swum hundreds of kilometres up from the Pacific throw themselves at a ledge of white water called Bailey’s Chute, deep inside Wells Gray Park. You can watch them fall back and try again. Below them, in the same green water, the rainbows are feeding on what the run brings.
The river earns its name early. It rises on glaciers in the Cariboo Mountains, and the silt settles out in two long lakes, Hobson Lake and then Clearwater Lake, which was dammed by lava. It leaves Clearwater Lake over a falls and runs south through the park in a chain of canyons and rapids, broken by a single long calm meander called the Horseshoe. The Murtle and then the Mahood join it. Its last stretch, outside the park, runs past the town of Clearwater to the North Thompson, where green water meets brown. Every part above the old Clearwater Bridge in town is closed from 1 January to 30 June, so for most of the river the season starts in July.
Start on the lower river, from the Mahood down to town. This is the most drivable water, and it is where guided drift boats work. A road follows the west bank up from town, and rainbows share the runs with whitefish and
bull trout.
The park river is where the run is. From Clearwater Lake down to the Mahood it is almost all white water, which you fish from the edges. The Horseshoe is the exception, slow and wide, and it is the obvious place to start. The park road north to Clearwater Lake runs above the river the whole way.
Above Clearwater Lake, the river between the two lakes lies past the far end of the lake, a long run by boat. Leave it until you know the lower river.
The last few hundred metres below the old bridge are where the green water meets the brown, and that colour line is worth fishing for its own sake.
Fish the lower river first, then drive north into the park when the chinook reach the chute.
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.
Likely
Older records here, recent stocking, a local guide or fly shop, a guide listing, or recent records on connected water nearby.
Water and habitat
Because Hobson Lake strips out the glacial silt, the Clearwater runs clear while the North Thompson runs brown, and you can read the bottom where the canyons ease. Rainbows sit at the soft edges of fast water: the seam below a rapid, the tail where a run shallows over gravel, and the slack water behind boulders. Whitefish feed on the bottom of the same runs. Bull trout wait deeper, near the heads of pools, and follow the spawning salmon.
How to fish it
Use one fly at a time. In July, dead-drift a weighted stonefly nymph along the seams below rapids, standing upstream and to the side of the run so your line stays out of the slack water. When caddis come off in the evening, change to a large caddis dry and skate it across the tail-outs. Once the salmon are spawning, a single egg pattern drifted along the bottom below them is usually the fly; stay off the gravel they are digging. If the nymph isn’t touching bottom, add weight or move to slower water instead of casting further. If rainbows rise to the dry and refuse it, go down a size and dead-drift it. Bull trout want a sculpin streamer swung slowly through the head of a pool.
Access and safety
Wells Gray Park Road leaves Highway 5 at Clearwater and runs about 70 km north to Clearwater Lake. It is paved for the first 43 km and gravel after that, with Clearwater Lake Campground and the boat launch at the end. On the west bank, Clearwater River Road follows the lower river toward the Mahood, but a washout has closed it to vehicles part of the way; check how far you can drive before you go. Past that point you walk or ride a bike. Guided drift boats put in at town and take out at Blackpool on the North Thompson.
The canyons are serious. The park river carries Class 4 rapids and drops that only experts run, and the water is glacier-fed and very cold. At the outlet of Clearwater Lake, the current runs fast to a falls, so obey the no-boating signs at the south end of the lake. Watch for bears on the trails.