Lake trout
Lake trout in BC lakes
The biggest char in the province and the oldest fish in most of the lakes that hold it. A big lake trout is not a fast grown fish, it is a decades old one.
Telling it apart
Pale spots on a dark grey or green body like the other char, but the tail is deeply forked where a bull trout's is shallow, and the whole fish is heavier through the shoulder. Size alone is often the answer: nothing else in a northern BC lake comes close.
Where it is
The north and the big deep cold water. Lake trout need cold year round, so they live in the large northern lakes and a handful of deep southern ones, and the records in this atlas are concentrated in exactly those places.
| Region | Lakes | Share |
|---|---|---|
| Omineca | 92 | 40% |
| Skeena | 56 | 24% |
| Cariboo | 34 | 15% |
| Thompson-Nicola | 22 | 9% |
| Okanagan | 14 | 6% |
| Peace | 10 | 4% |
| Kootenays | 2 | 1% |
| Lower Mainland | 1 | 0% |
| Vancouver Island | 1 | 0% |
How to fish for it
Depth and season. Right after ice off they are shallow and catchable from a boat with ordinary gear, which is the best two weeks of the year on most lake trout water. Through summer they drop to the cold layer and the fishing becomes a deep trolling or jigging game. Big spoons, big plugs, heavy jigs, slow. Autumn brings them back up to spawn on shallow rock. They grow slowly enough that a lake's big fish are a limited resource, and the regulations on these waters usually say so.
| Lake | Biggest on record | What the record says |
|---|---|---|
| Atlin Lake | 40 lb | Remote, deep, cold lake known for very large lake trout. |
| Binta Lake | 35 lb | Lake trout to 35 lb per the Village of Burns Lake fishing page; rainbows to 2 lb. |
| Teslin Lake | 35 lb | Skeena |
| Knapp Lake | 31 lb | The owner's sheet reports: Lake trout 31 lb, Rainbow trout 1.5 lb |
| Big Lake | 30 lb | Lake trout to 30 lb on the BC Adventure Big Lake page, with rainbows to 12 lb. |
| Dease Lake | 30 lb | Skeena |
| Long Mountain Lake | 30 lb | Lake trout to about 30 lb on a fly, reported by Outdoor Canada in 2017. |
| Muncho Lake | 30 lb | Peace |
| Quesnel Lake | 30 lb | Cariboo |
| Tagish Lake | 30 lb | Skeena |
| Takla Lake | 30 lb | Omineca |
| Uncha Lake | 30 lb | The owner's sheet reports: Lake trout 30 lb, Rainbow trout 1-3 lb |
Of the lakes on this page, 8 are catch and release water. That is a signal rather than a rule: what you may keep is in the Province's Synopsis, and the licence page explains where to read it.
Lakes to start with
Each of these has a page with its depth, its fish, the rule text we hold for it and a seven day forecast, and each is here because of the record beside it rather than because of its reputation.
- Atlin Lake 40 lb on record, Skeena
- Knapp Lake 31 lb on record, Skeena
- Muncho Lake 30 lb on record, Peace
- Quesnel Lake 30 lb on record, Cariboo
- Takla Lake 30 lb on record, Omineca
- Adams Lake 25 lb on record, Thompson-Nicola
- Babine Lake 25 lb on record, Skeena
- Canim Lake 25 lb on record, Cariboo
What these numbers are, and are not
The lake counts on this page come from the Province's fish observation records, plus angling reports where we hold them. An observation record says a fish was seen in that water on some date, and those dates run from this year back to the middle of the last century. A lake can appear here and no longer hold the fish, and a lake can hold it and never have been surveyed. Every lake page prints the year behind its own list, which is the honest version of this page's count.
The weights are reported figures, from guidebooks, from the Province and from anglers, gathered as each lake was researched. They are not official records and we do not claim they are.
Open the map: 1,843 BC lakes, each with a seven day forecast
Where to go next
- Every species in the atlas, with the lake count behind each.
- The trout and char of BC lakes, which tells all of them apart in one read.
- The licence and the rules, before you keep anything.