I have in-laws in Kamloops, British Columbia, a small city half way between Vancouver and Calgary on the 4,860 mile Trans Canada Highway and rail line. A few hours west and you have the thickly forested slopes of the Cascades and Coastal Mountains , picturesque islands and rugged shorelines to take your breath away. A few hours east and you are passing through a series of even more jaw-droppingly dramatic montainscapes - the Monashees, the Selkirks, the Purcell’s and finally the Rockies. In between lies what geographers term the Central Interior Plateau, an area of high, dry and rolling grasslands with Kamloops at its southern end. It’s a drive-thru kind of place with the usual collection of motels, gas stations and fast food joints that struggles to make any impression.

However, having stayed with the family on about three occasions I’ve come to love it. It’s “real” in a way that the tourist hot spots of Vancouver, Banff and Jasper are not - precisely because it’s so downbeat and unremarkable. Having said that it does get a lot of visitors. But, apart from the foreigners taking an overnight stop on the Rocky Mountaineer Vacation Train or filling up with gas and burgers on the way to somewhere more photogenic, it attracts a lot of Canadians. That’s because it proudly declares itself “Tournament Capital of Canada” hosting over 100 sporting events a year.

Why here? Because the range of activities is enormous - world class fishing, superb cross-country and downhill skiing, endless hiking and biking trails, great orienteering, fabulous canoeing, six golf courses, rock climbing, horseback riding, skydiving, ice skating as well as hunting for everything from wolves and cougars to moose and bighorn mountain sheep.

Gone fishing

Fishing was a passion when I was a child. But not something I’d done for years. On my first trip to Kamloops I’d had a day on a lake, with a boat. And caught nothing. The trout were very big, but smart. Someone as ignorant as myself really needed a fishing guide. But this didn’t appeal. For one thing it was expensive. And for another I prefer fishing alone.

This problem was partly solved on my second visit when my sister-in-law arranged an expedition with a friend of hers. He had worked in the parks service for many years and liked to fish some on the more remote and inaccessible lakes that even the locals couldn’t find.

I was still drinking a hastily prepared coffee when Mike arrived. Canadians have some pretty impressive RVs, or recreational vehicles – big shiny beasts with massive engines, huge fat tyres and lashings of chrome. Mike’s wasn’t one of them. The paint was dull, no chrome, and it had obviously served him well for many years in his job with the National Parks.

The man himself was lean and stringy, medium height, with a weathered face under an ancient baseball cap. He was dressed in worn brown trousers and faded lumberjack shirt, and must have been in his late 50s. I gulped down my coffee but he told me there was no great hurry – after a couple of weeks in Canada I was beginning to realise life out here moved at half speed.

“You ever used a bellyboat before?” he asked, scrutinising me cautiously. I thought it best to be honest, and suspected that he was viewing me with some misgivings – we were both starting to wonder what we had let ourselves in for.

As we wound our way into the hills Mike noticed me looking at a huge crack down my side of the windshield. “I guess it bothers the passengers some” he chuckled. He was talkative, but was also comfortable with silence, and used his words sparingly. I discovered he’d grown up on Vancouver Island and had worked for the park’s service his whole life, dividing most of his spare time between fishing and hunting. His wife didn’t share his passion and was interested in genealogy. “I don’t see the point,” he confided in me, “it’s just a bunch of dead people.” One son, a Mountie, had recently moved to the Yukon, and the other had a young family, leaving Mike to fish alone much of the time.

If you go down to the woods today

As we continued to climb, the woodland became denser and the farms less frequent. We saw a couple of bears – great if you are going to stay in your vehicle, but a bit disconcerting if you are planning to go into the woods with someone who can almost certainly outrun you.

The truck was struggling and Mike apologised. “Guess it’s time to get a new one, but this suits me fine. I can get a whole Elk or Moose in the back when I go hunting, plus all my gear, eh.” He explains that he pretty much lived off what he shoots. “I prefer the meat. Very lean. And today we’ll get fish. Last time I fished this lake, about a month gone by, the two of us must have caught ten apiece, but you can only keep two”. He asked me what I did and replied I was a writer. He didn’t comment, but I suspected he hadn’t got me down as much of a backwoodsman. Had my sister-in-law warned me I was going into the wilderness with a cross between Grizzly Adams and Crocodile Dundee I might have had second thoughts.

Two fish was about my total for the last five years, so that was fine by me. We were now on a dusty forestry track, with signs of recent logging on either side. Another ten minutes and we bounced to a stop in a wide clearing. Mike opened the tailgate and started pulling out equipment. There were two battered and well-worn rucksacks on aluminium frames, trailing a mess of light ropes. Then came the belly boats, which were essentially truck sized inner tubes covered in a tight fabric outer. Then a couple of rod tubes, a tackle box, two pairs of neoprene waders, four rubber flippers, our lunch sacks and a plastic cool-box.

Mike stuffed the two packs full, then lashed a belly boat onto each, before putting the remains of the load into the middle of the inflated rings - he’d obviously done this a few times before. We wrestled them onto our backs then set out along a very uneven track through the pines. Staggering under the cumbersome load, negotiating fallen trees and slippery roots, I silently prayed the hike would not be too long - I had an arthritic ankle, a gammy knee and more of a waistline than I would have liked.

Get your boat on

After about ten minutes we pushed through the thick undergrowth onto the marshy edge of Hadlow Lake. Mike handed me a rod, telling me it was brand new and to be careful to avoid breaking the brittle carbon fibre tip. I now realised each bellyboat was fitted with fabric seat which would support you once in the water. We were at about 4000ft, the day was slightly blustery, with white fluffy clouds floating across a blue sky – despite the fact this was August it was not particularly warm and I suspected a few hours suspended in the water could prove chilly. So I slipped the fleece trousers over my jeans, before fighting my way into the thick, chest high, neoprene waders. Being stockier than Mike the fit was tight – I felt like the Michelin Man. Then I had to pull on neoprene bootees followed by the rubber flippers. On top of all this went a fishing jacket, a waistcoat completely covered in pockets that held fly boxes, reels of line, tweezers, sunglasses, and about a dozen other things whose use I could only guess at.

Bending my torso or legs was nearly impossible, and once the flippers were on it was hard to stand up again - you try getting up from your knees when you have feet like a duck! Plus the ground was a boggy mess of fallen trees, marsh grass and young saplings. Already exhausted I shakily managed to raise one leg, then the other, over the side of the rubber ring, and wiggle my flippers down through the leg holes in the seat. Then, clutching the whole apparatus around my waist, and gingerly holding the fragile rod in the other hand, I staggered into the shallow water. The bellyboat meant I couldn’t see my feet and foliage wrapped itself around the flippers at every step. Once in the shallow water I had to wobble my way across about six yards of gently shelving mud. Despite the flippers my feet sank into soft ooze, releasing the stench of rotting vegetable matter.

Lie back and wait for the fish to bite

Miraculously I didn’t topple over, despite the mess of fallen trees and slippery branches underfoot. Once in thigh deep water I let myself flop down into the ring and we were afloat. Mike followed, without difficulty, and I began to move my feet up and down. Looking below I saw the ghostly white lake bed disappear into deep dark water. At full speed backwards I could make about a quarter of a mile an hour, but it was incredibly comfortable. The suit kept me completely dry and the seat held me suspended with the water a couple of inches below my lap. My arms rested on the sides of the ring, which also supported my back. The sensation was weird – a bit like being semi weightless, in a Layzee-boy recliner. Except, instead of being in the familiar surroundings of a living room I was encircled by water, and miles of pine forest – with my backside bobbing just beneath the surface of deserted lake. I tried to put the Jaws music out of my mind, lay back, and gazed up at the sky.

Mike’s voice brought me back from my daydream. “You’ll catch more fish” he counselled “if your line is in the water. Just make a short cast, then drag the line behind you, stripping it off the reel as you go.” I did as he instructed then heard him shout “I’ve got one!” Sure enough, his rod was jerking violently, then I saw the trout, a bar of flashing silver, leap from the water about twenty five yards from his bellyboat. He’d recover some line, then the fish would make a run and I could hear his reel screaming. A couple of minutes later and the fish had broken free. I was startled, and filled with excitement, expecting a bang on my line at any moment.

“Don’t go too far out” Mike called. “Stick to the areas where you can just see the bottom falling away. They seem to lie in the deeper water just off the shallows.” For the next half an hour nothing happened and I just became more comfortable with the surroundings. The lake was eerily quiet and deserted, yet I somehow felt as if we were being watched by unseen eyes from the dark pines – maybe a bear, a moose or an elk. The only other creature was a solitary loon that fished a respectful fifty yards away.

The bellyboat bristled with zipped pockets. I opened the one by my left hand and helped myself to a sandwich. I was fishing a small dark nymph, with a sinking line, near to the bottom, exactly as Mike instructed. But I had not a single bite. About every half hour I’d have another sandwich, and Mike would catch another fish. The Loon sometimes dived and chased these hooked fish. This made the trout fight all the harder – they not only had to battle the pull of the line, but also dodge the Loon’s darting beak. Mike released them all, apart from an especially large one he slipped into a keep-net dangling down by his leg.

When you’ve got to go….

After about three hours Mike paddled ashore and took a siesta on a dry earth bank. I carried on, determined to catch something, and wondering just what I was doing wrong. I tried a grasshopper that floated on the surface and a leech that bobbed along the bottom. I covered every yard of that lake and got nothing.

Another half an hour and I needed the toilet. The thought of what this was going to entail filled me with misgivings but eventually I realised that there was precious time to lose. The alternative, wetting mike’s dry suit, then wallowing in urine for the rest of the day, didn’t bear thinking about. I paddled over to where Mike had been sleeping. I felt the mud under my feet, but struggled to stand. My legs extended horizontally and my knees kept bumping under the ring, tipping me backwards every time I tried to get some purchase on the slippery bottom.

Eventually I was upright, the bellyboat around my calves. But I was still about six foot from dry land and I realised that I faced quite a challenge. Disengaging my feet from the seat, one at a time, then lifting them over the edge of the ring whilst standing on one leg, was not easy. I got one foot over the side, then carefully leant down on the rim of the bellyboat before lifting the other. The ring rolled under the weight of my shaky hands, the trailing leg got caught in the seat and I pitched face forward into the water. My two hands went deep into the mud and I remembered what Mike had told me earlier. “We call the mud ‘Loon shit’. ‘Cos that’s what it smells like when you stir it up.” How right he was.

I wasn’t totally soaked – but my sleeves were wet to the elbows and my pride was in tatters. I heard Mike calling “Watch the rod tip – don’t snap the tip!” I had no idea where it was, let alone whether it was broken. I grabbed a submerged tree trunk about six inches from my nose and staggered onto my feet. Turning around awkwardly I swayed back, recovered, then fell forward again. I grabbed the edge of the bellyboat to break my fall, but it rolled once more, the far side now flipping over my head and smacking onto the back of my neck. I could hear Mike yelling and now I saw the rod tip. Somehow it was poking through the ring, somewhere near my right ear. Amazingly, I was still on my feet, but wobbling wildly, with the ring bucking under the weight of my hands and wedged round the back of my head. The rod bent alarmingly and I expected it to shatter at any moment.

After a couple more minutes I was clambering up the bank, shaking all over. Somehow the rod was intact and I’d managed to avoid wetting myself further. Praying that there was no grizzly in the vicinity I staggered into the woods, relieved myself with considerable difficulty, then lay down exhausted to work out how the hell I should do the whole thing in reverse.

My luck changes

Somehow I managed to relaunch myself without further embarrassment and damage. I apologised to Mike, and we had a bit of a chuckle. He then suggested we swap rods. Not because he wanted to protect his new one but because the line was different, and could be the reason why I was catching nothing.

By now I had given up all hope of getting a bite, so I was shocked by a hefty thump on the line. Maybe I had snagged a log on the bottom? But then the log took off, stripping line from the reel with a satisfying screech. Shortly after, a 2lb Rainbow leapt into the air, then dived and zig-zagged for its life. Eventually it began to tire and after about five minutes I steered it into the landing net that dangled by my side. Mike paddled over and we slipped it into his keep-net.

A few minutes later, and some pride restored, I hooked another. To begin with everything went as before. The fish made a huge initial surge, then, as it tired, I was able to start winding it in. But then the reel jammed. And I realized the Loon had dived and was giving chase. Unable to free the reel I just pulled the line in and let it trail in the water, hoping that if the fish made another run it would not take all the slack I had recovered. If that happened the jammed reel would mean one of two things – either the leader would break, or the rod tip would shatter. Luckily the fish was beaten and ended up in the keep net with the other. Mike took the reel, ejected the spool, freed it up again, and passed it back to me.

Crazy as a Loon

I now had my two fish, but landed and released a third. Eventually Mike suggested we head back - it was mid afternoon and we’d made a good day of it. He was just wading ashore when I hooked a fourth fish. This one was slightly smaller than the others, about twelve inches long, and the Loon, having missed all our previous fish, showed rather more determination. I saw the fish slicing through the greenish depths, and the black and white Loon, like an underwater rocket, in hot pursuit. I reeled in quickly, thinking that if I got the fish close enough the bird would back off.

How wrong I was. The end of the fly line was now at the rod tip, leaving about nine feet of clear monofilament leader. My fish thrashed about on the surface as I fumbled with the landing net and raised the rod high. Drawing the fish towards me I was shocked to see the Loon pop up next to it, about six feet from my flipper tip. Only now, at close quarters, did I see how large it was. Big fat muscular body, like a goose on steroids, long sinewy neck, a deadly black dagger of a beak, one black crazy eye, and mad as hell. I had no idea where the name Loon came from – until that moment. You know that line about “They are more scared of you than you are of them”? Well, nobody had informed this particular bird. For a second I thought it was going to go for me, but then in a flash it speared the trout, snapped the line and was off. It stopped about forty feet away, the fish limp in its beak, then one gulp and my rainbow was gone.

Shaking my head in disbelief I staggered ashore, eventually crawling on my knees into the marshy grass with the bellyboat still around my waist. “Bloody hell”, I muttered “You could drown in six inches of water with this thing on!” Mike looked at me and chuckled “You could, that’s for sure!”

I let that go and said “Did you see the Loon? Took the fish right off my line!” “Yep”, he replied, “they’re crazy all right. Lucky he got the fish. Otherwise he might have started on you. I seen that before.” Now he tells me - up until that point I’d only been scared of the bears!

It was the end to a remarkable day. And the best bit for me? The one that got away!