Stand on the old curved wooden bridge north of Dawson Creek and look down. The river under you is the colour of milky tea, warm and slow, swinging through a horseshoe bend it has cut deep into the Peace country. In summer people float it on inner tubes. Fewer of them know that the same brown water carries walleye and pike down to the Peace, and that a fly will find them if you fish it low and slow.
The Kiskatinaw changes character twice on its way north. It rises at Bearhole Lake in the foothills east of Tumbler Ridge and wanders through lake and muskeg country until its western branch joins. From there it becomes a farm-country river, running beside a highway along the edge of the Sunset Prairie, down past a weir to the two highway crossings. Below them it drops into a canyon and stays there until it meets the Peace east of Taylor.
The lower river is the one with a reputation. Walleye, pike and rainbow trout are all fished on its lower course, and the provincial park beside the curved bridge gives you a campsite on the bank. The water right at the park is shallow and muddy, so treat the campground as a base and go looking for the deeper outside bends downstream.
The middle river, through the farmland around a tributary called Brassey Creek, is the stretch you will hear least about. Reach it from the road bridges, ask a landowner wherever the banks are private, and find out for yourself what it holds.
The headwaters are the surprise. You can spend a morning on clear stillwater trout and an evening on a murky pike river without leaving the watershed.
Start with the canyon bends below the bridge, and keep the lakes for the day the river runs too thick to read.
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.
This is a turbid prairie river for most of its length. It carries sediment all season and thickens with spring runoff, enough that the town drinking from it switches to stored water when the freshet arrives. In water this colour fish find a fly by its outline and the push it makes, so size and movement matter more than detail. Walleye and pike sit where the current slackens: the soft inside of a bend, the slow tail of a deep run, the edge of a log jam or an undercut bank. The canyon below the highways is the least-visited water on the river and the place to look for depth.
In dry years the river runs low, and recent droughts have pushed Dawson Creek to declare emergencies over its supply. Low water crowds fish into the few deep bends and warms what is left.
Fish and forage
Walleye and northern pike are the mainstays of the lower river, with rainbow trout in the mix, and bull trout may turn up as they do elsewhere in the Peace system. The headwater lakes add perch and burbot. Forage in a river like this is likely to be small fish such as suckers, chubs and sculpins, as it is through the wider Peace, and that points straight at streamers.
When to fish it
Late-spring runoff makes the river its muddiest, so the useful season starts once it drops, usually into summer. July and August are warm and slow, the best months for wading the lower bends. September and October bring cooler water and longer evenings, and evening is when walleye move up to feed. Winter belongs to the lakes and their ice.
How to fish it
One fly at a time is the law here. For walleye, start with a weighted dark streamer such as a black or olive Woolly Bugger. Cast across and slightly upstream into the slow side of a run, let it sink close to the bottom, and retrieve in short strips with pauses. If nothing touches it, go heavier before you go brighter, then change to chartreuse for contrast in thick water. Dusk is the time to be standing at a deep bend.
For pike, change to a big, bulky baitfish pattern on a short wire or heavy bite tippet and strip it past the slack water along cover. A pike that follows and turns away wants something different on the next cast: speed the strip up, or let the fly stop dead.
Access and safety
The provincial park sits on the Old Alaska Highway about 28 km north of Dawson Creek, off Highway 97, with a frontcountry campground and a short walk to the curved bridge. A landslide damaged one of the bridge’s piers and closed it to vehicles, so check its status and the park’s before you travel. There are no developed trails, and the way down to the water below the park is over steep clay banks that turn greasy when wet; the climb back out is always longer than the slide down.
The upper river is reached by the Kiskatinaw Forest Service Road from Highway 52 to Bearhole Lake, which has a small campground and boat launch. The road is not usually maintained and turns rutted and slippery after rain. Much of the middle river crosses farmland, so ask before you cross cultivated or posted land. Bears and moose use the whole valley.
Regulations
The Kiskatinaw has no listing of its own in the Peace region’s water-specific table, so the region and province rules govern it. Every stream in this zone carries a bait ban and requires a single barbless hook all year. Walleye may be kept at 3 a day with only 1 over 70 cm, and northern pike at 3 a day with only 1 over 90 cm. Trout and char come under a daily quota of 5, of which no more than 2 may come from streams and only 1 may be over 50 cm. Every fish from a stream must be released from 1 April to 15 May, rainbow trout from streams from 1 May to 15 June, and bull trout from the Peace watershed all year. Possession is two daily quotas for most species. The province bars fishing within 23 m downstream of the lower entrance to any fishway, canal, obstacle or leap, so give the weir room. You need a basic licence from age 16. Check the regulations for grayling, whitefish and any in-season changes before you fish.
Below the canyon the river slips into the Peace, and the big river carries on toward Alberta.