On a hot August afternoon the surface of Monte Lake is warm, the highway hums along the shore, and the kokanee are nowhere near the top. They are down in the cool layer that forms under the warm water every summer, packed in schools, feeding on zooplankton. Find that layer and you find them. It is why the lake, beside Highway 97 between Monte Creek and Westwold, keeps turning out some of the heftier kokanee in the Interior.
The lake lies along the floor of a narrow valley of ponderosa pine and rolling grassland, with the highway down one side of it. It comes in three parts. The north end has the small community, a resort and campground, and a couple of day-use beaches. The long open middle is deep water, the kokanee water, where a sounder does the finding. And the shallower edges, all around, are where rainbows feed when the lake first opens up.
Start at the north end. Reports of kokanee catches keep coming back to the north and northeast end of the lake, and it is where you’ll find a place to stay; ask there about putting a boat in. Most of the lake is fished by trolling, and you’ll need a boat for open water.
The deep middle is a summer fishery. Kokanee spread through it in schools that move, so when the fish you marked an hour ago are gone, go looking rather than waiting.
It’s quiet water on a lake with a busy reputation.
In winter the lake freezes and the fishing moves onto the ice; January is the month for it, when the ice allows.
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.
Confirmed
Recorded on this water in the last 15 years, or named for it by a fishery agency, its fishing rules or a fishing publication.
Monte is a valley-bottom lake, long and deep enough to stratify in summer, with a warm surface layer over a cool band where kokanee sit through the hottest weeks. A small provincial park on the east shore protects a patch of ponderosa pine and grassland. As on most lakes around Kamloops, the rainbows use the shallower edges and shoals most in the cool months, when food is hatching in the shallows and the surface is comfortable.
Fish and forage
Kokanee live mostly on zooplankton; elsewhere, mature kokanee are known to take chironomid larvae and pupae, and mayfly and damselfly nymphs, over shoals, which is what gives a fly angler a chance at them. The rainbows feed on the same insects along the margins.
When to fish it
Kokanee fish from early spring through fall. Right after ice-off, put your time on the margins for rainbows. Through July and August, go deep for kokanee, early in the day if you can, before boat traffic and heat. In September and October the surface cools and fish of both kinds tend to spread out again. Ice fishing comes in January, conditions permitting.
How to fish it
For kokanee on the fly, fish from a boat or float tube with a full-sinking line, and use a sounder to find both the schools and the depth they are holding at. Count your line down to that depth and troll or strip a small fly slowly through it. Pink has been the colour trollers report most often here, so a small pink fly is a fair first choice. If you go twenty minutes without a touch, change depth before you change the fly, then change to a chironomid pupa or a small nymph fished slowly. Once you find a school, stay with it; kokanee bunch up and move together.
For rainbows after ice-off, cover water along the shoals and margins with a leech or nymph on an intermediate line, retrieved slowly. When you find fish rising to a chironomid hatch on a calm day, anchor at the edge of the shoal and fish a chironomid pupa under an indicator, set so it hangs just off the bottom. If it doesn’t work, adjust depth first, then colour, then move. One fly on the line at a time, open water or ice.
Access and safety
Monte Lake is about 35 minutes southeast of Kamloops: east on the Trans-Canada to the Monte Creek junction, then south on Highway 97, which runs along the lake. The community, resort and day-use beaches are at the north end. The provincial park has no camping or day-use facilities.
The highway is right there, so pull well off it and watch fast traffic when you’re unloading. Wind on valley-bottom lakes can rise quickly, so keep an eye up the valley if you’re in a small boat or a float tube. In winter, test the ice yourself before you trust it, and stay off it early and late in the season.
Regulations
Check the current regulations for Monte Lake itself before you fish, including any in-season changes. Region-wide, the daily quota is five trout or char, with no more than one over 50 cm and no more than one bull trout or lake trout, none under 60 cm; lake trout must be released from 15 October to 31 January, which takes in the January ice. You may also keep five kokanee, and hold no more than two days’ quota. The creeks running into and out of the lake fall under the region’s stream closure and can’t be fished from 1 January to 30 June. Under the ice, you may fish one line with one lure or fly.
Where next
North along Highway 97 past Falkland, a back road climbs to Pillar Lake and Joyce Lake, two small rainbow lakes, and Pillar’s north-end shoals are made for a fly line. Pillar also has a stone column on its hillside with a boulder balanced on top, the kind of landmark you notice on the drive up and stop for on the way home.