A small, shallow stillwater on the east side of Lake Koocanusa near Elko. Forty years of brook trout plantings ended in 2000 and the lake has not been restocked since, so any fish you find today are legacy or self-sustaining, not a fresh annual program.

Blue Bottom Lake is a small stillwater on the east side of Lake Koocanusa, the Kootenay River reservoir, west of Elko and not far from where the Elk River meets it. The province's 1969 survey puts it at 3.6 hectares, dropping to a maximum depth of 5.5 m and averaging 2.2 m across the basin, essentially a single shallow bowl with no deep, cool refuge once summer sets in.

For an angler judging whether the lake is worth a stop, the release record is the fishing report, and here it is a closed one. Provincial hatchery records log 22 releases of brook trout into Blue Bottom Lake between 1960 and 2000, totalling just over 100,000 fish, mostly fry and fingerlings from the Aylmer and Boundary strains. The program ran fairly steadily through the 1960s, 70s and 80s and then tapered to occasional plants in the 1990s, ending with 4,550 Aylmer-strain fingerlings in June 2000. Nothing has been stocked since.

That quarter-century gap means any brook trout in Blue Bottom Lake today are either long-lived survivors or the product of natural reproduction, not a fresh annual cohort. Confirm locally whether the lake still holds fish before building a trip around it.

With no active program and a basin that never gets past 5.5 m, Blue Bottom Lake fishes as a small, warm, single-zone stillwater rather than a two-tier lake with a deep retreat. If brook trout are present, the general small-lake stillwater playbook applies: work chironomid patterns and scuds under an indicator over whatever shoal and weed structure the lake holds, and expect fish, if any, to be shallow all season rather than stacked on a drop-off.

No confirmed boat launch, parking area or shoreline access point has been found for Blue Bottom Lake. Treat it as a regulation-and-access check water: confirm a put-in and any private-land or seasonal restrictions locally, and confirm current regulations in the official synopsis, before committing a day to it.