You leave the long reservoir road above Carpenter Lake, climb a gravel side road into the timber, and the lake that opens up at the head of its creek has no power lines and no store, only a few campsites and the cabins of a small off-grid community. Most traffic up the valley is bound for Gold Bridge, and the turn is easy to miss.
The lake is simple to hold in your head: two ways in, at opposite ends. One is a campsite on the north shore; the other is a smaller site at the south end, where Marshall Creek drains out and runs down toward Carpenter Lake. Between them is open water, and the part of it you fish is the edge, where the shallows along the shore fall away into the deep.
The north end is the place to start. The campsite there takes tents, truck campers and small trailers, and a boat launch is close by, which matters: a lake like this is best fished from a small boat or a float tube, anchored off that edge.
The south end is quieter still: a small treed campsite at the outlet, for tents and small rigs. The outlet is worth an evening, when trout move toward moving water and the shallows along the lake’s edge. You can fish it from the bank at the outlet, or push a float tube off from below the campsite and work the shore back toward the north.
The lake was once called Alexander Lake; it takes its present name from John Marshall, an early settler at Lillooet.
Start at the north campsite in late May or June, when chironomids are hatching on the valley’s lakes, and save a September evening for the outlet. If the lake is slow, a smaller one with its own campsite sits about a kilometre off the same road on the way back down, and nobody has said much about its fish.
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.
How to fish it
Fish one fly at a time. From a boat or float tube anchored off the drop-off, start with a chironomid pupa in size 14 or 16 under an indicator, set so the fly hangs just off the bottom. If nothing takes after twenty minutes, shorten the depth a little, then try another stretch of the edge. If the chironomids are dead, change to a leech or a damselfly nymph on a slow-sinking line, retrieved in short, slow pulls over the shallows toward the drop-off.
On calm summer evenings, watch for rises and change to a dry fly: an Elk Hair Caddis cast to the rise and left still, then twitched once. Fish that rise and refuse it are often on emergers; change to a chironomid in the film. Keep the boat off the shallows so it doesn’t push fish off the edge you are fishing.
Access and safety
From Lillooet, follow Hwy 40 west for about 72 km and turn north onto Marshall Lake Road. For the north campsite, follow the road on to where it becomes Mud Creek Main and then a short spur to the shore; for the south campsite at Marshall Creek, take the left fork toward Marshall Lake Road South. The roads are gravel, and the sites are small, with pit toilets and little else.
This is remote country. Wildfire can close roads in the valley in summer, so check fire conditions before you leave. Bears and cougars live in these hills; keep a clean camp. Carry what you need, as the nearest supplies are in Gold Bridge or back in Lillooet.
Regulations
The rules list no closure for Marshall Lake; check in-season changes before you go. Boats are limited to 15 km/h on the lake.
You may keep five trout and char a day, only one of them over 50 cm and no more than one bull trout, none under 60 cm, with no more than two daily quotas in your possession. Fish one line with one fly. Freshwater invertebrates may not be used as bait at a lake.
That smaller lake on the way down is Carol Lake. Below it all, Carpenter Lake fills the valley floor, and farther up toward Gun Lake there are ponds that hold brook trout.