When the water cools in October and the beach crowd has gone home, Paul Lake gives up its biggest rainbows of the year. It is a lake with a long memory. In the 1920s a guide named Bill Nation worked out of a lodge on this shore, and he carried green sedge nymphs over from Knouff Lake and let them go; within a few years that sedge was the main one here.
Then a minnow nearly took the lake back. Redside shiners turned up in the 1940s, ate down the freshwater shrimp the trout grew on, and kept the trout thin and pale for decades. A few seasons of electrofishing have since cleared out most of the spawning shiners. The shrimp are coming back, young trout carry red flesh again, mayfly hatches that had gone missing have returned, and anglers are catching bigger fish. How far the recovery goes is still an open question, and you get to fish it while it’s being answered.
The lake itself is one long, narrow basin, deep down the middle, under the bluffs of a provincial park, with the Pinantan road running along its north shore. Water comes down to it from Pinantan Lake to the east and leaves at the west end as Paul Creek. Three parts matter to a fly angler: the park shore, the shallow edges, and the deep middle.
Start on the north shore, where the park’s campground, a long sandy beach, a dock and a cartop launch all sit together. Paddle a float tube or canoe out from the launch and you can be fishing the edges within minutes.
The shallow edges are where the lake’s food lives: shrimp, chironomids, caddis and leeches, and mayflies again. In high summer the shiners move out where the trout are, and a minnow pattern earns its place.
The deep middle is where trout wait out the summer heat. Once October cools the lake, the bigger fish come back up onto the edges.
Pinantan Lake, where the shiners came from, is a short drive farther along the same road, and Heffley Lake lies over the hills to the north.
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.
Fish and forage
Their menu is freshwater shrimp, chironomids, sedges, leeches, damselfly and dragonfly nymphs, the returning mayflies, and shiners. A fly box for Paul holds a chironomid pupa, a shrimp, a pheasant tail, a damsel nymph, a leech and a small minnow pattern.
How to fish it
Anchor on the edge of a drop-off where the shallow bottom falls away and fish a chironomid pupa, size 12 to 16, under an indicator on a floating line, set close to the bottom. Fish it slowly; the takes are often a slight dip. If nothing happens, change depth before you change flies, then colour. If the pupa still fails, switch to a leech or shrimp on a slow sinking line and retrieve it in short, slow strips along the bottom. In summer, a minnow pattern stripped along the edges in the evening imitates the shiners. You may fish only one fly on the line; when it stops working, change it.