(Excerpted from Rivers on my Mind, by Van Gorman Egan, who writes here of Campbell River, which he looks down on from his study, and which he often fished with his best friend, Roderick Haig-Brown.)

In my fishing diary there is a rather exhaustive entry dated February 18, 1978. Often my entries are sketchy, too much so, but this one is remarkably detailed. I should like to tell you of the fish that spurred this extended note, a steelhead that took a Lord Iris fly on a cold, windless morning. I shall spare you some of the details, but not many, so please bear with me for the story - and the fish - has a relevancy beyond the ordinary tale of a large, fighting fish.

One of the good winter steelhead lies in the Main Island Pool was opposite the dying top of a parasitized hemlock. It fished really well when the river level, regulated by the generating station up river, was at around 1800 c.f.s. (three of six generators in use). The fly on a size 1 hook was drifting deeply on a slack line where a chute of water off the bar was meeting the main current. That is when the floating portion of the line began a somewhat different direction. The change was subtle but enough to cause me to raise the rod sharply. The response was heavy though not violent, as might be made by a fish of ten pounds or so. It paused and I felt several thumping headshakes telegraphed into my grip followed by a run to the far side of the river, taking fifty feet of backing off the reel. For a time the fish swam slowly upstream, giving me, I thought, some advantage, which after a minute or two seemed to be born out by the fish coming rather easily back toward me. I recovered all the backing and half the fly line, but the fish remained like an anchor out in front.

About the time that I check to see how far I need lead this fish to bring him onto the exposed gravel bar downstream, he repeats this performance, this time taking seven feet or more of backing, but again moving well up river. And again I bring him back much as before, this time easing him closer to the exposed bar. Then a third flight to escape, this one more with the current, takes him into the heavy rapids that races into the Lower Island Pool. With yards of backing leaving the reel, I follow as quickly as slippery rounded boulders allow, arriving winded but dry. There is still great strength in this fish, now holding midway in the pool, and my estimate of his size goes up. Twelve pounds? Fifteen? No time for that for the fish is again on the move - slowly, inexorably stripping the backing, and again I am in tow. Just before he reaches the next white water I take some of the pressure off and he stops short of his best escape route. As I move down to get opposite him, his head and upper body break the surface. A broad carmine side confirms it to be a cock steelhead. With slow, cautious pressure I slide him toward the algae-covered rocks and then onto them. There is no more fight. A quick tape measurement reveals his length at 37 inches, girth 20 inches, which later using the Ward formula works out to be 18 1/2 pounds.

This is a very tired fish that I carry to the small quiet pool between the top satellite and main lower island, and I hold him upright for several minutes while he recovers balance, then watch for another ten or more minutes as he circles his confinement. There is an escape route but not much current to direct him. All the while his broad, steel-gray dorsum contrasts clearly against the deep green algae. Even as his pace quickens, he stays within the pool, so I take my leave and return to fishing. Some half or three-quarter hour later I return. The river has risen a few inches, the current somewhat stronger, and the steelhead is gone.

This was not the “very last steelhead” of the race of Campbell River fish, but it was close. Swim counts by provincial fisheries technicians at this time were revealing what those of us well acquainted with the river already feared. The Campbell River steelhead was on its way out. Today it is extinct. Alterations in the watershed by clear-cut logging and alterations in the river for hydro electric generation have taken their toll, but it was not until the high concentrations of zinc and copper reached the lower river that the final demise occurred. I suppose this is why I look upon my last winter-run steelhead in the Campbell, a fish truly from the race of Campbell River stock and not its tributary, the Quinsam, with some special mix of wonderment and remorse. This noble creature, fashioned over the millennia by the magnificence of a wild west coast river and the great sea journeys of countless generations, gone - utterly - in the space of a minute or less on the geologic clock.

Indeed, what hath the hand of man wrought?