Late in August, just upstream of the town of Clearwater, sockeye leave the North Thompson and turn up a side river to spawn, and the trout follow them in. For those weeks the big silt-coloured river you have driven beside since Kamloops becomes a long feeding lane, with fish waiting wherever clear water spills into the murk.
The river comes off a glacier in the Cariboo Mountains west of Valemount as a small cold stream. Below the point where the Albreda River joins, it turns into a big valley river running south past Blue River and Avola, and is squeezed once through a rock slot. At Clearwater the green Clearwater River pours in from Wells Gray Park, and from there the river braids and slows past Little Fort and Barriere to meet the South Thompson at Kamloops. That gives three parts, and they fish very differently.
Start on the lower river, where the Clearwater comes in. A provincial park campground sits on the meeting of the two rivers, a few minutes south of town off Highway 5, and you can walk down to the water from it. Below it the river splits into channels between Clearwater and Little Fort, and that braided water, with its seams and gravel bars, is where rainbows, bull trout and whitefish feed. People call those bull trout Dolly Varden locally.
The middle river, from the Albreda down to Clearwater, is the one most people only see through a windshield. Its reward is the mouths of clear side rivers. The Raft comes in just above town and the Mad and the Blue River higher up. Wherever salmon are spawning, look for char sitting just below a mouth like these. The rock slot above Avola, called Little Hells Gate, is worth stopping for as a viewpoint. It isn’t somewhere to fish.
Above the Albreda, the headwaters near Valemount are small cold water that nobody has much to say about. That makes them unproven water, there for someone who likes finding out for themselves.
Work the lower river first, then drive north one creek mouth at a time.
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 glacial river. In flood season it runs high and brown. As it drops through late summer it clears toward blue-green under heavy cedar and spruce. Bull trout and rainbows hold where colour changes: along the line where a clear tributary meets the main current, at the tail of a gravel bar, and in the soft water inside a bend. In the braids below Clearwater each channel has its own seam, which gives you more edges to fish than a single channel would.
Fish and forage
The trout and char are resident, and mountain whitefish and northern pikeminnow share the river with them. Chinook come up the river, and sockeye run into the Raft. When salmon spawn, loose eggs drift downstream to the trout and char waiting below them, and as the spawners die the char turn to the flesh. The rest of the year bull trout eat small fish, so a fly that looks like one is the right choice.
When to fish it
The river comes up from June into July with snowmelt, and its main current gets very fast and powerful. Spring fishing before that can be good. After the flood, wait for the river to drop and clear, which it usually does by the end of summer. The best weeks are late August into September, when sockeye are in the Raft and trout and char stack below the tributary mouths from Avola down to Clearwater. Every char goes back then: bull trout must be released from 1 August to 31 October. Coho spawn up the Clearwater as late as October, which keeps the water just below its mouth worth fishing into the autumn.
How to fish it
For bull trout, put one weighted sculpin or white streamer on a sink-tip. Cast across and slightly down, let the fly swing through the seam where clear water meets brown, and step down a few paces between casts. When the salmon are spawning, cut back to a single egg pattern and dead-drift it along the bottom below the spawners. Stay off the gravel where they are digging. When the eggs are finished and the fish are dying, switch to a flesh fly. If the swing gets no takes, the fly is probably riding too high: go to a heavier tip, or slow the swing by mending upstream. If that still fails, move on to the next creek mouth instead of pounding the same seam. For rainbows, borrow from the Clearwater next door: a stonefly nymph early, then a large caddis, fished through the braids.
Access and safety
The towns along the river have little public access, so carry a map. There is an informal launch under the Highway 5 bridge at Barriere on the west side, a little public access at the Little Fort ferry site, and rough bank access at the McLure ferry. Some old public rights-of-way to the water are rough or unusable. Guided drift boats start on the Clearwater in town and take out at Blackpool, on the North Thompson. You need permission to cross private or posted land, and Indian Reserve land.
During the June and July flood, the water carries logs and hidden snags. Ferries have been pulled in high water before. Paddlers launching at McLure have to run Heffley Rapids. Black bears turn up along the banks now and then.
Regulations
The rules list no closure for the North Thompson at any time of year: the river is exempt from the region’s spring closure on streams. Check in-season changes before you go. You must use a single barbless hook, and only one fly on the line. The daily quota for rainbows is 2, none over 50 cm. Outside the bull trout release period, the region allows 1 bull trout, none under 60 cm, within a combined trout and char quota of 4 from streams, no more than 1 over 50 cm. Release all steelhead. The whitefish quota is 15, and you may possess two daily quotas. Fisheries and Oceans Canada sets the salmon rules, so check its notices before you fish for chinook. Report a tagged fish to the Fish and Wildlife Regional Office in Kamloops at 1-800-388-1606.
From here, go up the Clearwater into Wells Gray, or spend an evening at Dutch Lake in town, where the hatchery will lend you a rod.