Late in October, where the Meziadin pours into the Nass just below Highway 37, you can see the line between two rivers: the Meziadin clear and the Nass heavy with silt.
Steelhead lie along that seam, and a fly swung down the edge of the colour passes right where they can see it.
The Nass is easier to read in four parts. It rises at Nass Lake in the Skeena Mountains and runs a long way through the Nass Basin, where hardly a road reaches it. Near Meziadin Junction the Bell-Irving joins and the highway crosses, and below that the river turns into big water through a chain of canyons. Past the Tchitin River it comes out into the Nisga’a valley, runs beside the lava beds and the villages, and meets the tide in Nass Bay at Gingolx.
Start at the highway. The Meziadin mouth is a short walk from the end of an old road along Meziadin Lake, and it fishes from the second half of September into early November. The Bell-Irving, which joins upstream and fishes under its own rules, is the river to wade when the Nass is too big to read.
The canyon river below Meziadin is for those who know big water. Class IV rapids guard most of it, an island-split one below the White River and a canyon above the Tchitin among them, and the Cranberry joins about halfway down. Bears and wolves walk its bars. Reach it by raft, or by the forest road west from the Cranberry.
The lower river is the one you can drive to from Terrace. Here the Nass runs past a lava flow that dammed it about three centuries ago, a campground at Vetter Creek sits near its bank, and at Gitwinksihlkw a long footbridge, once the only way into the village, leads across to a trail along the water. Above the lava, in Vetter Creek, live steelhead people call phantom fish, said to have been shut in when the flow came down.
The upper basin, above the Bell-Irving, is days of floating from a put-in far up Highway 37. Leave it for later.
Once the mainstem has shown you its colour, look to the side rivers next, starting with the Tseax, which comes down to the Nass through the lava beds.
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.
Likely
Older records here, recent stocking, a local guide or fly shop, a guide listing, or recent records on connected water nearby.
When to fish it
Above the Kitsault Bridge, a little upstream of the Tchitin River mouth, the river is closed to fishing from 1 January to 15 June. Inside that water, the short stretch from the white triangular boundary signs below the Meziadin mouth up to the Highway 37 bridge also closes from 8 August to 15 September, which is why the seam is a late-season find. On the rest of the highway and canyon river, September and October are the months.
For the lower river below the Kitsault Bridge, the rules list no closure; check in-season changes before you go. Every steelhead bound upriver passes through it in the fall run, so the fall is when to go.
Access and safety
From Terrace, the Nisga’a Highway runs north about 100 km to the lava bed park and the villages. The other way in is from Kitwanga up Highway 37 to the Cranberry, then west on a long unpaved forest road to Gitlaxt’aamiks. A boat ramp near Gitlaxt’aamiks, off Irene Meadows Road, is where floats from upstream end. Fuel and food are in Gitlaxt’aamiks and Laxgalts’ap, services are thin, and cell coverage is patchy.
The lower valley is Nisga’a land. The public is allowed reasonable access to Nisga’a Public Lands for non-commercial recreation, on terms the Nisga’a Lisims Government can set, so check its notices before you fish there. Lava rock is sharp and can be thin at the edge of the water. The canyon reach has big-water Class IV rapids and power lines across the river above one canyon; scout often, and don’t take an unfamiliar raft into it.