While the boats line up on the big shoal at Roche Lake in May, a short drive up the hill to the north there is a smaller lake where the trout come into the shallows to eat midges. Bleeker is a lake you can cover from a float tube, and in a good spring it has given up rainbows to five pounds to anglers fishing chironomids on those shallows.
The catch is the winter. Small, rich plateau lakes run short of oxygen under the ice, and Bleeker has had winterkills. An aerator in the middle of the lake is there to keep the fish alive, but it has not always saved them, so some years are big-fish years and some are not. Nobody can promise you what is in it until you go and fish it.
The lake fishes as two parts: the shallow edges and the deeper middle. The edges are where to start in spring. That is where the chironomids hatch and where the fish come to feed. Anchor or hold a float tube just off the weed, hang a pupa under an indicator, and watch for fish moving in.
The middle is the deeper water, with the aerator in it. When the shallows warm in summer the fish slide out towards it, and that is when a leech or a shrimp pattern fished slowly through the deeper water does the work. In winter the middle is the part to stay away from, because the aerator keeps the ice thin and in places open.
A small forest-road campsite sits partway down the north shore, a handful of vehicle spots used almost entirely by anglers, and if it is full the campgrounds at Roche are a short drive back down the road. When Bleeker goes quiet, the lakes of the Roche Lake park are all around it, and Dardanelles waits in the hills beyond Roche to the south.
Fish in this water
Each fish is rated by its strongest evidence. A rating says how sure we are a fish is here, not how many there are, whether it is worth fishing for or whether you may keep it.
Likely
Older records here, recent stocking, a local guide or fly shop, a guide listing, or recent records on connected water nearby.
When to fish it
The rules list no closure for the lake; check in-season changes before you go. May and June are the months to target, when the chironomids are hatching and the fish are on the shallows. At Roche next door the ice often goes in the second half of April, later than on the lower lakes near Kamloops, and Bleeker is likely to be close behind. Summer fishing is slower and deeper. In autumn, when the water cools, the fish are likely back on the shallows.
Before you drive up, ask a Kamloops fly shop how the lake came through the winter. After a hard winter it may be thin on fish.
How to fish it
Start with one chironomid pupa under an indicator, set so the fly sits just above the bottom on the shallows; black, chromie and dull olive patterns in sizes 12 to 16 are the ones that work on the lakes around Roche. If nothing happens within half an hour, move along the edge and anchor again near fish you have seen moving.
When the midges stop working, change to a shrimp pattern and fish it slowly with short pulls through the weed. In summer, go deeper at the edge of the drop-off with a leech on a sinking line, retrieving it slowly with pauses. Fish one fly at a time: BC allows one artificial fly on a line, so change the pattern rather than adding a second.
Access and safety
From Highway 5A, take the Roche Lake road into the hills for about 7 km, then turn left onto the Bleeker Lake forest road and follow it about 2 km to the lake. The recreation site is small, charges a fee and works on first come, first served. The forest road can have fallen trees across it, so carry a saw.
Black bears live in this country; keep a clean camp.