Spoiled rotten with BC bull trout

Spoiled. Rotten. There’s no other reasonable way to describe the feeling that washed over me as Andre Lafferma guided the metallic blue Bell Jet Ranger II helicopter off the gravel bar, elevated into the cold, gray sky, and disappeared into the rain-blurred ether. Light three passengers and some fly-fishing gear, the chopper climbed to the lip of the river canyon, topped the spruce and cedar trees that reached to the slate-gray heavens, and, just like that, we were alone on a remote, emerald-green river somewhere in British Columbia’s Cariboo Mountains.