The way onto Birch Lake runs through a café. Public access to the lake is only through the fishing camp on its shore, so you check in at the resort before you launch, and that small gate likely keeps the lake quieter than its size would suggest. Behind it is a big plateau lake, deep enough to stay cool all summer, where rainbows can top five pounds, and where a fish of nine or ten pounds has been reported.
Birch lies just south of Highway 24, east of Bridge Lake, on the plateau between the Bonaparte and North Thompson valleys. Its depth matters more than its outline, and the lake comes in layers: the shallow edges along shore, the deep cool water beyond them, and the bottom, where a second fish lives.
The edges are where a fly angler starts. In the early season, before the surface warms, rainbows come in toward the shallows to feed, and that is the time to fish them close to shore from a cartop boat or float tube. Look for the line where the pale bottom drops away into dark water, and anchor on it.
The deep water is where the trout go as summer comes on. Trolling is the most effective way to fish Birch, and a fly angler can join in by rowing a sinking line and a leech slowly along the drop-off through the warm months, when the edges have gone quiet.
Down on the bottom live
burbot, the freshwater cod, and they grow large here, with fish reported to around eight pounds. Fish for them near the bottom, and expect them to be the catch you weren’t trying for.
Phinetta Lake, a few minutes away with a public dock and campsites, makes a good evening when Birch is blown out. Lac des Roches, back along the highway, is the next lake to try for a big rainbow.
How to fish it
In the shallow-water season, anchor on the drop-off and fish a single chironomid pupa under an indicator just off the bottom. If nothing takes, change to a leech or scud on a slow intermediate line, stripped in short pulls along the edge. When the fish go deep, change to a full-sinking line, count a leech or a Doc Spratley down, and row it slowly along the drop-off, varying the depth until you find fish. If that stays quiet, change direction and speed before you change the fly. One fly on the line at a time.