Peace River Canoe Float ((Pic Heavy))
 

Hi everyone. Last week my wife and I spent four days floating on the mighty Peace River. We had an absolute blast. We paddled the 140km reach from Clayhurst Bridge north of Dawson Creek in BC to the Dunvegan bridge north of Rycroft and Grande Prairie.

The river pushed us along at an average of about 6 km/hr and was very calm and peaceful for the most part though it is a BIG river.

The Peace River valley is a very unique and interesting habitat with the south facing slopes(north bank) being very arid and dry with fascinating sandstone erosion patterns. Hoodoos, sage bushes, and even cacti were common which was a little strange seeing this far north. The north facing slopes were lush with forest and foliage.

Wildlife was plentiful with many beavers, eagles, mule deer, and elk sighted along the way.

The only disappointment was the lack of fish. We fished hard for many hours without any results. We tried just about everything and everywhere including parker minnows, plastic baits, jigs, bobbers, spoons, spinners, dead stick. We fished the main channels, back eddies, foam lines, pools, stream confluences and more. The water was pretty silty, with visibility about a foot but I still was expecting at least some action. Any suggestions? :)

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Is that a fish finder I see?

Did you mark anything?

My dad told me the pulp mills Awhile ago killed the fish in there

Awesome pictures.
Sorry, can't help you with the fishing.

Looks and sounds like a great trip. I envy you. That's a pretty small canoe for two adults, large dog, and gear for 4 days!

Indeed. In some of the deeper pools (6-8m of water) I got some rare blips on the sonar at about 3-4m deep but my sonar is pretty crap, so it may not have been fish ;) I use it almost exclusively just to tell depth and water temp.

Our anchor wouldn't hold us over those big pools so unfortunately we couldn't fish them for long.

It's true - the molded seats and benches waste a lot of cargo space. However, it's very comfortable and stable and with some planning and clever packing we were able to fit everything we needed with room to spare. It's a heavy canoe at ~80lb empty so I wouldn't want to portage it :scared0018:

:):)Way down stream from the pulp mills we are catching 12lb walleye and pike up to 26lbs. Some of my best fishing has been on the good ole Peace River.
Water still higher than normal now but by fall it'll be fish time....:)

this is not true. ive caught many fish between the town of P.R and carcajou.

Nice pic's .. the rivers are very high now but

here is a tip try a bell weight and then two flys off your line at the creek mouths and fish abit down stream where they come in.it should bounce down the river with the flys being up above the weight .. its a type of drift fishing

if you have any Raps that are 4 to 6 ft down type then have them on at all times when going down river ..

so how you make a spinn cast drift rig is weight on bottom then come up 6 inches or a foot and make a double loop .. so make a loop in your line then make a circle and pass your line through it twice and you will have a loop in line to put hook off.. do that loop again a foot or so up line .. now that you have loops done ty a fly on a piece of line and have about 5 inches out and put a double loop at end of line .. then take that loop and fly and stick loop through one loop on your rod line and weight then stick your fly through that loop that you just put through your rod line and pull so it should be a Fly on your rod line sticking out now.. then do the same with the other loop on your rod with another made up fly and loop .. those made up flys and loops will come off your main line if you push backwards..

also remember this is the Dog days of summer so it will be slow just keep fishing the fish are everywhere in rivers now feeding so you never know .. when drifting just keep bottom bouncing even with a jighead and twister tail

.. hope this helps

David:)

Thanks David. We were doing pretty much exactly as you suggested. While drifting, most of the time I was bottom bouncing a jig with a minnow or twister tail. For a while I tried a fly rig exactly as you described except used 3-way swivels instead of tying loops in the main line since the swivels seem to tangle less. For flies, I tried san juan worms, mickey fins, stonefly nymphs(the stonefly hatch was on bigtime), wooly buggers, and some others.

Most of the streams were completely dry but a few still had a trickle. The river itself dropped over a meter over the four days we were out. I'm thinking the fishing would be much better late August once the water clears up.

My sister used to test the discharge water at the peace river pulp mill and she said the water the they put into the peace is way cleaner then the water they take from the river.

Dog Days of Summer yep but still keep at it!!! big fish if you get lucky.. those bulls that are there are 10# plus .. good luck.. and sometimes thats fishing as you know..

David

Really makes me want to do another multi-day canoe float. Haven't done one in about 3yrs! Maybe in september we'll try one.

I grew up in the town of Peace River and although there is fish in the river it is very difficult to fish due the size and volume of water. Through the town of Peace River the river averages 6 mph lol. Best bet is to fish near feeder creeks etc. I had my tournament boat on the river and had a issue with my big engine, it was all we could due to creep up river with both the bow mount and stern mount electric trolling motors wide open (36volt 101 lb/thrust). They don't call it the mighty peace for nothin. My advise and it's not easy for me to say because I love that river would be to float/paddle a different river if fishing is a big priority

Looks like a great trip. Did my first canoe river trip this year and plan on many more! great way to camp!!!
Thanks for sharing

I recognize some of the photos, especially that hoodoo. We saw a golden perched on it last year as we came around the bend. The photo would have been awesome if we had zoom. We are hitting up the river in the beginning of August, hope it clears up a little by then.

Thanks for posting the pictures. Looks like you had a great time even without the fish action.

BW

We saw a golden as well a couple clicks from where that picture was taken. Lots of balds and a few hawks too. Have fun!

So. . .this might be an obvious question (or indeed, just a stupid one! haha) but I'm curious of the logistics of your trip (I'm wanting to do something similar). If you spent a few days floating down a river. . .how did you get back to your car at the end? Or did you paddle back upstream? (kidding on that one of course :P)

Again. . .sorry if this is a stupid question lol

No problem. Glad to help. There are a few options.

What we did was load our truck and had friends of ours drop us off at the launch, take our truck, and then pick us up four days later at Dunvegan.

It worked out since they had relatives to visit in Rolla right near the launch and are just awesome super accommodating people.

Otherwise, you can coordinate two vehicles and leave one at the destination then drive to the launch, but that adds a bunch of driving back and forth.

One other option is to hire a shuttle to pick you up and take you back to your vehicle. Some cab companies do this.

It blows my mind that the voyageurs and explorers of the past did just that day after day not to mention the 180lb of fur bundles they each had to carry on portages. They must have had freakishly powerful biceps and upper backs. If I remember my history from school, mostly small short men were picked for canoe balancing purposes. Alexander Mackenzie paddled upstream that same reach we floated down in his famous trek to the coast. Amazing.

wow
 

looks like quite the trip!!!! Must have been very relaxing! I love the dog with a swim vest on!!!! very cool beautiful pics...

The only person I know that had great success fishing that stretch ( in terms of then-edible bull trout) used to live by Cotillion and she used rotten cabbage on a barbed pickerel rig. Not all that ethical, but she never took more than she ate, and imo the bulls have more than made a comeback since no one's takin' em any more.

Excellent photos. Looks like a fun trip.

Still an awesome trip even you though didn't catch any fish. Still better than going to work...nice pics.

The first moose hunt I did I went down a small river to nowhere and then tryed to bring the moose back up river. We went 30 km downriver in about six hours, it took us 3 hard 9-10 hour days to get back upriver even without a moose! We killed a moose about a 2 hour padle from the truck, real happy we didnt kill it 30 k downriver!

On a mid September elk hunt on the Athabasca from Hinton to Whitecourt we met two guys canoing upriver, they had put in at Lake Superior in May and were trying to make it to the Oregon coast for Christmas! I asked how many kilometers they could do in a day and they said about 10 if they paddled 12 hours... about the distance you can cover going downstream without even paddling in 1 1/2 hours... absolutely crazy!

I fish downsteam of Peace River and I have no problem catching fish. But fishing the Peace is not like fishing anywhere else I've fished.

You can catch fish on a unbaited lure late in the year, but spring and summer, the main river is pretty much a bait only proposition.

By early summer the feeder streams like the Smokey and the Notikewin are clear enough for unbaited lures. Yellow and red or White and red are the best bet. Spoons or jigs will work. My favorites are Len Tompson 5 of diamonds and twin tail rubber jigs in Yellow and Red, or solid White.

For bait, I choose beaver meat or chicken gizzard. With water that murky you need lots of scent in the water.

The best places are the top end of back eddies and the mouths of feeder steams.

When bait fishing this rive, patience is essential. It can take an hour or more to get one bite, but the results can be well worth the wait.
Walleye to 12 pounds are possible below the town of Peace River and Pike to 20 pounds or more are caught in the river every summer.

Or you could target Goldeye. Goldeye will hit almost any small lure, but I have my best luck fishing for them with #8 hooks on a pickerel rig baited with beaver meat and suspended a foot or two under a float.

This setup drifted through a backeddie or in a stream mouth with usually catch all the Goldeye I want. If the water is especially murky, I will fish this same rig on the bottom, in which case it's a sit and wait proposition.

That is the thing about the Peace. You kinda have to know when, where and how to fish to catch anything. Fanning the water is seldom effective.

There are plenty of fish in the river, but it's a big river that can and does change character from hour to hour and from one mile to the next. Add to that the fact that for a good part of the year the water is murky at best, and can be down right muddy, and you have a serious challenge trying to catch fish in most of this river.

For anyone interested in what it was like for the Voyageurs, GeoTourism Canada, www.geotourismcanada.com/ has been running a York Boat trip down the Peace River from Dunvagan to Fort Vermillion for a couple of years now.
They are always looking for people interested in making the trip.

This is a bit of what it's about.

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I took these photos at Notikewin park a few weeks ago.