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| Destination Review: Komaham Lodge, Terrace B.C., Canada | ||
Komaham Lodge (www.komahamlodge.com)
| Date: October 5-12, 2003
| Reviewer(s): Captains Al and Skip Montello
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| Introduction: | ||||||||||||
Along with two other angling buddies, we left for a week-long fishing adventure on a few of the Skeena River tribs, a river area that has long been counted as one North America’s great salmon and steelhead destinations. Before the trip, we spent several weeks researching fly patterns and reading up on the Skeena River system. We also spoke by phone with the lodge’s guides about fly patterns, the weather and water conditions. They were helpful and knowledgeable. We were to be the lodge’s last party of the season—we hoped to catch the later stage of the Coho run and the start of the Steelhead Fall run.
| The Komaham Lodge: | The lodge is owned and operated by the Kossler family. The well-kept buildings are comfortable and rustic in design and décor. The food provided at the lodge is practically “home-cooked” and is served in the main building, an area that also contains a bar, gathering area and fly tying table. The Kosslers are German-born and take hospitality seriously. The lodge also has on premises a smokehouse operation that produces the best smoked salmon I have tasted—so keep your daily catch. They also pack it up for travel and will arrange to ship it back for you. Visit the link above for more information and photos.
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The River Systems: | The Skeena River system is home to steelhead trout and all five Pacific salmon species. Depending on the time year, you could encounter all of them. During our week, we spent most of our time fishing for Coho in the Exchamsiks and Kalum rivers. Fishing regulations are strict and sometimes limit what rivers can be fished. The good news is that all the tribs (that we fished) contained moving fish preparing to spawn. The rivers are subject to glacial runoff which gives the water a greenish tinge that impacts clarity. Any additional runoff from rain creates higher water level and clarity issues, all of which impacts angling success.
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Our Komaham Lodge Guides: | We had the opportunity to fish with four guides. All were knowledgeable of the rivers and outstanding jet boat drivers. We were more than impressed when these guys zipped upstream at 30 mph and faster, dodging rocks, partially submerged logs, and sand bars to get to the best salmon lies. For the most part, the guides were more familiar with light tackle tactics than with fly angling. But their knowledge of the rivers and of the salmon that ran them more than made up for it. To accommodate the four of us, two jet boats were used. It was entertaining to watch the guides compete with each other for the best salmon lies and what boat hooked up more fish.
They did everything you would expect from a quality guide. We could not have asked for more.
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The Fishing: | The fishing day began just after sunrise and finished before sundown. The guides required a good amount of light to safely navigate the rivers. Regardless of your preferred style of fishing, fly or light tackle, you won’t have any problem hooking up. The Coho salmon are particularly aggressive and will hit flies or marabou tailed jigs. The real secret is to get the fly or jig down in the water column, close to the bottom, and to provide good movement on the “bait”. Most flies or jigs were tied with brightly colored materials: we found that purple, chartreuse, charise, and hot pink with lots of flash material worked best. As we fished the rivers each day, we experimented with different fly patterns and techniques, thus our successes improved. Our guides were impressed with our ability to hook countless Coho using fly rods.
The Exchamsiks is best fished from the boat. The guides knew where the fish would lie and anchored their boats in the right spots for us to make accurate casts that resulted in excellent presentations. Most of the lies from shore, however, were not fishable because of water depths or difficult casting because of trees and shrubs. The Kalum River, though, did afford good wading and casting opportunities. But the Kalum ran harder and had more color than the Exchamsiks, which resulted in fewer hook-ups. We did manage, however, several nice Coho, a steelhead and some nice trout. |
 Typical Coho Fly Patterns Our group preferred fly tackle. We used 8 &10 wt rods with 200 and 300 grain lines. Our fly selections included leech patterns, flash flies, large streamers and many no-name creations. The common denominator was bright colors, large and weighted. In the course of the week, at best count, we had nearly two-hundred hook-ups. Keep in mind, though, that this total was low compared to the fishing opportunities available during the height of the salmon runs. Prime time for the Skeena River system is mid-July to September. During this time, you could hook summer-run steelhead and all five salmon species. Our future plan is to do just that!
Areas of Improvement: The Komaham lodge historically has catered to light tackle (spinning or bait cast) angling techniques. They realize that developing their knowledge and skills associated with fly fishing would greatly enhance the lodge’s appeal. We look for that to happen in the near future.
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