Pavilion Lake is so clear and so poor in weed that you can watch the bottom fall away under the boat, pale where it is shallow and turquoise where it drops. Down there, out of sight, are mounds of living rock that grew a fraction of a millimetre a year for thousands of years, and the trout live above them. Over it all stand the cliffs of Marble Canyon.
It is one long, narrow basin in a box canyon on Highway 99, a few kilometres long and less than a kilometre wide, deep in the middle and fed from underground. The highway and a string of cabins take the east shore. The west shore is the quiet side. The lake gets little runoff, so there are few creek mouths to work, and the fish follow the edges instead.
Getting on is the first puzzle. Public access is thin and squeezed between private homes, but once you find the launch it is easy to spot again, and people fish from the shore there when the weather turns warm.
The west shore is the reward for paddling across. It has far fewer homes, a few sandy beaches and bluffs, and less of the boat traffic and highway noise that the east side lives with.
The deeper water holds the reefs. Divers come for them in marked zones, and in a lake this bare, any structure is likely to draw fish, so the edge where the mounds begin deserves more of your time than open water.
In winter the lake freezes over and becomes an ice-fishing lake; a local ice derby has been held on it in February.
Two smaller lakes up the canyon, Crown and Turquoise, hold rainbows too. You can slide a canoe into either from the drive-in campground on Crown and paddle out toward the waterfall at the end of Turquoise.
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
Start along the drop-off off either shore with a single chironomid pupa under an indicator, set so the fly hangs just off the bottom, or on a slow sinking line counted down to the same depth. This is borrowed from BC lakes generally rather than proven here, but in very clear water chironomids tend to run small, so begin around size 16. If nothing takes, go one size larger so your fly stands out, then try a darker colour, then move along the edge. When fish are cruising but refusing, switch to a small leech or a Woolly Bugger stripped slowly up the slope from deep water. Anchors are reported to be barred on this lake to protect the microbialites, along with downriggers, so check the park’s rules and expect to fish on the drift, from a float tube or on a slow troll.
Access and safety
From Cache Creek, take Highway 97 north, then turn west onto Highway 99 toward Lillooet; the lake is along the highway inside Marble Canyon Provincial Park. Pavilion itself has no day-use facilities and very little parking, so use the toilets at the Crown Lake campground, whose gate closes in winter. Highway 99 is busy through the canyon: do not park on the shoulder. Access routes pass close to homes, so keep it quiet. Black bears are common, and summers are hot, so carry water. The lake, the canyon and Chimney Rock are spiritually significant to the Ts’kw’aylaxw people of Pavilion; treat the shore with that in mind. Keep well clear of divers’ buoys in the marked zones.