By March the Kitimat has spent the winter low and clear, and the first steelhead start to come into the lower river from Douglas Channel, still bright from the salt. The river falls gently on its way to the sea, in long even runs, and that easy gradient is why people who swing flies come to a town better known for its smelter.
Get the shape of it first. The river rises among glaciers in the Coast Mountains, runs north through a steep valley, turns west, then bends south into a broad valley that the highway from Terrace follows down to town. The fishing falls into three parts: the upper river above the Highway 37 bridge, a middle river of gravel bars and logjams down to where the Wedeene River comes in, and the town water below it, which slides past the hatchery and the campgrounds into tide at the head of the channel.
Start on the town water. A campground called Radley Park sits right on the bank, and just past it is the Pump House Pool, a popular pool with an accessible dock. Through summer and into September this is salmon water, and many of the fish come in on the high tide, so the tide table matters here as much as the river.
The middle river is the stretch most people drive past on the way down from Terrace. It braids around wooded bars, and in March and April it carries steelhead through long swinging runs between the Wedeene and the bridge. It is drift boat water as much as walking water, and it has wood in it that can kill you.
Leave the upper river until you know the rest. It is a smaller river in a steep glaciated valley, reached from the highway and forest roads whose condition you should check first, and it and every tributary of the Kitimat are closed to fishing from 16 March to 31 May.
Below the last pool the river hands you on to the salt of Douglas Channel, where chinook and halibut are fished; check the federal tidal regulations for their seasons.
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.
The Kitimat is a glacial river. It colours and rises with snowmelt and warm weather, sometimes quickly in June, and through July it goes up and down with melt and rain. Heavy rain in late September and October can blow it out for days.
Fish hold where the current slows without going dead, along the seam below a gravel bar or in the tail of a run just before it breaks into the next riffle. In low clear water, steelhead and trout tuck in against logjams and cut banks. In the town water, salmon fresh off the tide stack in the deeper pools and move on with the next tide.
Fish and forage
Steelhead are the river’s reputation, with a smaller run of winter fish ahead of the main run. Chinook are the big draw by weight, and coho, chum and pink salmon fill the summer and autumn. Sea-run cutthroat and Dolly Varden live in the river all year; like their kind elsewhere on the coast, they eat salmon eggs and small fish.
When to fish it
January and February are trout months up and down the river. March and April are steelhead time below the Highway 37 bridge, with sea-run cutthroat on the same water. Chinook begin to show in the town water in late May, improve through the second half of June and peak in the first week of July. Chum and pinks arrive in mid-July and run into mid-August, with the odd early coho late in July. Coho pick up after mid-August and are at their best through September. October can still give coho in the main river if the heavy rain holds off, and November and December are back to trout.
Whenever you go, the best day is the one when the river is dropping and clearing after rain.
How to fish it
For steelhead, a two-handed rod or a single-hander with a sink tip covers the long runs. Cast across and a little down, mend once, and let the fly swing slowly across the seam, then take a step downstream and repeat. If nothing touches it through a run that looks right, go to a heavier tip or a darker fly before you leave.
For coho, fish early in the morning and on the incoming tide, when fresh fish push into the lower river. A bright fly stripped short and sharp along the slower edges of a pool often draws them; when they stop moving to it, change to something smaller and darker and slow down.
For winter cutthroat and Dolly Varden, use a single-handed rod and an egg pattern dead-drifted along seams and logjams. If that fails, change to a small minnow pattern and swing it across the tail-outs.
Chinook in glacial summer water call for heavy tackle. Fly anglers do well on chum through July and August.
Access and safety
Radley Park has camping, a fish-cleaning station and a drift boat launch at the end of its road, and a dirt road past it leads to the Pump House Pool. Hirsch Creek has a quieter campground on Highway 37 and a second launch. From the 8th tee of the golf course near Hirsch Creek, the Coho Flats trail runs along the bank to river access, and from there the Fisherman’s Trail leads on toward the Rod and Gun Club over rock shelves and through forest, on an old route along the river between Haisla clans. Kitimat River Park, about 6 km north of town on the west side of the highway, is a walk-in floodplain forest with the river beyond it.
This is grizzly country; carry bear spray. Below the Red Bridge, sometimes called 18 Mile Bridge, a logjam has lain across the drift, and anyone launching above it has to get past it. The river can come up fast, so check the river gauge (station 08FF001) before you go.
Regulations
The Kitimat has its own regulations, and BC lists them as under review: check in-season changes before every visit. The rules ban bait on the river and allow no powered boats. Region 6 requires a single barbless hook in all streams, and you may use one artificial fly on a line. There is no fishing on the west half of the river between the boundary signs near the Kitimat Hatchery outfall, and none within 100 m of a government hatchery unless otherwise designated.
You need a Steelhead Conservation Surcharge Stamp to fish for steelhead, and no fishing for steelhead is allowed in any river in the region from 15 May to 15 June. All wild steelhead must be released. Hatchery steelhead, adipose clipped and over 50 cm, may be kept at two a day from the Kitimat, within a province-wide annual quota of 10, and they count toward the regional trout and char quota of five a day, only one over 50 cm. Record each one on your paper licence at once; once you have kept your two, you stop fishing the Kitimat for the day. Dolly Varden from streams must be released all year, and you should check the regulations before you keep any trout.
Salmon fishing is managed federally, so check the federal salmon regulations for the Kitimat before you fish for chinook, coho, chum or pinks. The provincial rules stop where the river meets tidal water.