Fort Babine Lodge–Flyfishing on Babine River

We are now closed for the winter season … snow has already begun to fly … but we will opening next spring.

Fishing is still active on the river and lake, with Coho stocks filling the waters. The fishing has been great throughout the year despite the unseasonable high waters of the spring and into the mid summer.

Our website and email mailboxes for the lodge will be monitored for the winter season and the satellite phone will be moved to the Smithers area so please feel free to plan and book next years season at the lodge by contacting us earlier.

admin@fortbabinelodge.com or 250-800-0668 will get you in touch with us for what will be sure to be an exciting fishing season next year.

Fort Babine Fishing Lodge is located at the closest point on Babine Lake to access the river section made famous by the name “Rainbow Alley” for it’s world renown rainbow trout flyfishing .

It is called “Fort” Babine Lodge because of its proximity to the second fort (Old Fort being the first) that the Hudson Bay Company built at the head of the lake to supply the American and European immigrants like the prospectors of the 1800s in the Omineca gold rush (1860′s to 1880′s) and the other foreign interests that moved north.

The nearby village of Fort Babine is now reserve lands occupied by the Lake Babine Nation people because they were literally pushed or forced to move there more than 10 decades ago when their fishing weirs were destroyed by the government in the early 1900′s (although there was already a small village at Fort Babine, their main village was located about 15 kilometers north nearer to the Babine River Fishing fence and is thought to be by archaeologists to have over 5000 people living there during fishing seasons for thousands of years). After fishing season they would disperse to their various properties around the entire lake.  Most of the descendants of the original village are still living all around the lake and including the bulk of Burns Lake residents.  Had it not been for government interference with their fish weirs that were there for thousands of years they likely would still have a large town or city there since their economic development of the fishery was larger than the entire fishery on the coast by Prince Rupert.

Archives in the catholic church recorded transactions of sales of more than 35,000 bales of dried salmon sold to the Hudson Bay Company to feed the Omineca gold rush by the Lake Babine Nation from Fort Babine.

An excellent article can be found on the Lake Babine Nations’ website that deals with one of the oldest treaties negotiated in British Columbia.  It describes their political struggles regarding the violent destruction of their way of life and the treaty signed to somewhat compensate or deal with the misappropriation of their way of life.  It can be found here at http://www.lbntreaty.com/index.php/history-culture/treaty-story

Fort Babine Lodge is owned by a first nations group of the Na’doet’en peoples (of their Grouse Clan) of “Chinookeebin” Lake  (“Chinookeebin” is aka “Babine” Lake which is the French name given to the lake by the fur traders (translated “big lipped”– having to do with their first impressions of the female indigenous peoples who decorated their lips with large plugs of wood).  “Chinookeebin” in the Carrier dialect is roughly translated as “water flowing from left to right” <- their literal description of the water from their cultural perspective for those living on the north side of the lake … the indigenous living on the other side of the lake would have called the lake something else in their dialect). The YinkaDene Language Institute has done much work in putting their dialect and fascinating linguistic idiom down onto paper. Their website can be found here.

The lodge was built in 1992 on the land where an old sawmill from the 1940′s was located (Mercury Logging Mill).  Fort Babine Lodge is geographically located in northern British Columbia on Babine Lake (largest natural lake in BC) and nearest to the Babine River which is part of the Skeena River watershed  flowing out eventually to Prince Rupert on the Pacific coast.

The Babine River is world famous for its fly fishing only section of the Babine River called Rainbow Alley, and for its world record size steel-head in the Class A Provincial Park called the Babine River Corridor Park. Rainbow Alley is closely accessed through our Lodge in the summer months, steelhead fishing later in the fall is a bit further than Rainbow Alley but still within a short driving distance from the lodge.

At our Lodge on Babine Lake, we offer excellent log building accommodations with hydro, showers, and cooking facilities in every cabin.  Internet access is available at the main lodge through wireless router out on the deck.

Smithers, British Columbia is where your fishing trip would start where you will drive to the lodge on a well serviced Forestry road, roughly 85 kilometers north of the town of Smithers.  You would first travel about 40 kilometer north on the Babine Lake Road (east of Smithers by a few kilometers and well marked with signs on Highway 16) and then west on the Nilkitkwa Forest Road (also well marked with signs for Fort Babine Lodge) for another 40 kilometers where you will see the final sign for Fort Babine Lodge and the cabins a hundred meters away from the signs near the lake. The main office is in the biggest log building right beside the cabins.

The species of fish you can expect to find in the Babine River include Rainbow Trout, Bull Trout, Lake Trout, Cutthroat Trout, Steelhead, Coho salmon, Chinook salmon, Pink salmon, and Sockeye salmon.