The coho come into the Coquitlam in a few big pushes, most often on the back of a heavy rain in October. The river rises brown off the gravel country above Port Coquitlam, and when it drops and starts to clear, fish that weren’t there two days ago are lying in pools beside a city trail, with traffic crossing the bridges overhead.
It is a short river, and people have rearranged most of it. It rises in the Coast Mountains, drowns in Coquitlam Lake behind a dam inside a watershed the public can’t enter, and comes out below the wall as a small, braided river with a long way still to drop. Below the dam it has three parts: a gravel stretch at the top where it leaves the forest, a middle stretch through parkland, and the lower river, held between dikes and a trail, through Port Coquitlam to the Fraser.
Start low. The lower river, from the Lougheed Highway down to the Fraser, is where the run gathers, and a trail follows the bank the whole way, so you can walk from pool to pool and look before you cast.
Chinook and coho arrive from mid-September, chum come in later, and a few
sea-run cutthroat slide in behind the spawners to eat loose eggs.
The middle river, from the Lougheed Highway up to David Avenue, runs through a forested city park with its own trails. The same fish pass through it on their way up, and it is the easier water to wade in the low flows of July and August. Cutthroat that hold over in its slower pools are the reason to come back in March and April.
The top of the river is the part most people never see. A road climbs past gravel pits to a salmon hatchery and a locked gate below the dam. Most of the river’s silt comes from a side creek called Or Creek, and above where it joins, the water comes straight from the reservoir. After heavy rain, when the rest of the river runs the colour of milky tea, this stretch can be the clearest water on it.
From the mouth, the Fraser and the Pitt are a short drive apart. Above the dam, the lake the
sockeye once ran to is still waiting to see whether they come back.
How to fish it
Coho in a small clear river spook easily. Come at a pool from below, stay back from the tailout, and cast a size 6 fly across and slightly down, let it swing, then strip it back in short pulls. If fish follow and turn away, go smaller and slower; if they ignore it, change colour, and change again when a new pod moves in. In coloured water after rain, go bigger and brighter on a sink tip and fish the soft edges, where travelling fish get out of the current. For cutthroat, drift a single egg pattern under an indicator below spawning salmon; when they stop taking it, switch to a fry pattern stripped fast across the tailouts. One fly on the line, always. A 6- or 7-weight suits the salmon, a 4- or 5-weight the trout.
Regulations
BC sets the rules for the river in its 2025-2027 synopsis, and the closure above the Mary Hill Bypass Bridge is the one that shapes the year. On the lower river, from the Lougheed Highway Bridge to the Mary Hill Bypass Bridge, you may keep 2 hatchery trout a day, 20 to 30 cm only, from 1 July to 15 October, with a possession limit of two daily quotas. Across Region 2, streams require a single barbless hook, wild trout and char from streams must be released, and so must every wild steelhead. Fishing for steelhead needs a Conservation Surcharge Stamp on your licence. Fisheries and Oceans Canada sets the salmon rules, so check theirs before you fish for salmon. The regulations also restrict powered boats on parts of the river. Check in-season changes before you go.