In July, when lower lakes have gone warm and slow, Calling Lake is still feeding. It sits higher than its neighbour Big O.K., high enough that midsummer is one of its good times, and almost the whole lake is shoal: shallow water over weed and soft bottom, alive with scuds, snails, leeches, waterboatmen and the larvae of caddis and midges. Rainbows cruise over it, feeding in a few feet of water.
Plenty of anglers treat it as a campground. Calling is the lake on the road to Big O.K., the one people camp beside and then leave each morning for the fly-only water up the hill. That makes it the find: a shoal lake full of food, with heavy rainbows of its own.
Think of it in three parts, all of them shallow. At one end a dam holds the lake back where its outlet leaves. Along the north shore the bottom shelves gently, soft and organic with fallen wood. The south shore is steeper, with rock outcrops and cobble.
The dam end is where you arrive and where you start. A rustic campsite sits beside the dam on the north side of the outlet, and the shallows nearby are a fair first look at what the lake eats. Fish the weed edges off the campsite at first light before you go anywhere else.
The north shore is the long feeding flat. A second campsite sits about a third of the way down it, and from there the gentle, wood-strewn bottom runs on with sedge and grass at the edge. Trout work along it hunting scuds and leeches, and a slow fly over the weed finds them through the summer.
The south shore is the one people pass by. Rock outcrops drop into slightly deeper water along a cobble bottom, and on a bright day it gives fish shade and edge close to shallow food. Work it from a boat, casting in toward the rock.
The lake can be drawn down for irrigation, and a hard drawdown late in a dry summer thins the shoal; if the water is well down, the steeper south shore should hold the most depth close in.
When the shoal goes quiet, Big O.K. is about 5 km up the road, its sunken island waiting under the wind.
How to fish it
A pontoon or small cartop boat lets you cover the shoal. Anchor along a weed edge off the north shore in water a few feet deep and start with a scud on a floating or slow-sinking line, retrieved in short, uneven strips just over the weed. If nothing takes after a few casts at different angles, change to a small leech and slow down; if fish are swirling at the surface, change to a chironomid pupa under an indicator, hung just above the weed.
In autumn, if fish are slashing in the shallows, try a waterboatman fished in quick, short pulls. In a summer evening sedge hatch, change to a sedge pupa pulled toward the shoreline and then a dry when fish rise. On a bright afternoon, move to the south shore, cast in toward the rock, and let a leech sink before you start it back. Fish one fly at a time, and change the pattern or the depth when the fish stop.
Access and safety
From the highway between Logan Lake and Ashcroft, near the west end of the copper mine, turn onto the Laura Lake road and drive about 7 km, then turn left and follow the road to the 14 km mark at Calling Lake. The roads skirt and cross mine country, so stay on the signed route. From Merritt you can also come in by forest service road, up the Pimainus road and onto the Calling road. Expect rough gravel either way, and take a truck with clearance; four-wheel drive is the safe choice.
The two campsites are rustic and small. The lake is high and open, so the weather turns quickly, and nights are cold even in summer.