East Kootenay stillwaters carry a mix of general and lake-specific rules (bait, motor and ice-fishing limits vary by water). Chain Lake's individual limits are not confirmed here. Check the current Region 4 synopsis before you fish.

The lake is compact, 12.4 hectares, and shallow: a 1969 provincial lake survey sounded it to a maximum depth of 4.6 m and a mean depth of 2.4 m, with 3.4 m of Secchi-disk clarity. A basin that shallow has no deep refuge to hide fish from an angler working the whole water column, and it also means the lake warms and cools faster through the season than a deep East Kootenay lake would.

Chain Lake's fishing record is really its stocking record. Every release on file, Aylmer-strain brook trout from the provincial hatchery system, is charted below.

Chain Lake is a put-and-take brook trout fishery: 11 recorded releases between 1982 and 2005 put 29,750 Aylmer-strain fish into the lake, as fry, fingerlings and unstaged plants, most recently 2,500 fingerlings on 2005-04-14. No release has been recorded since, so confirm locally whether the lake is still topped up or now fishes on a residual, self-sustaining population built from those decades of plants.

A basin this shallow fishes top to bottom rather than to a deep drop-off: work a chironomid under an indicator over the flats, and switch to leech and attractor retrieves as the water warms through summer. Treat that as a general shallow-stillwater starting point rather than a confirmed local pattern until it is checked against reports from the water itself.

No boat launch, trail or parking area is confirmed for Chain Lake. It sits in the Bull River watershed of the East Kootenay; confirm the access route, any private-land sections, and current Region 4 rules locally before you commit a day.