Ice holds Peter Hope Lake into May. When it lets go, rainbows that wintered in the deep middle of the lake come up onto shoals of pale marl, and a fish over that bottom shows as a dark shape against the white.
It has a name for big rainbows and slow days, and it has earned both. Get the shape of it first: a deep basin in the middle, a broad shelf of marl and weed all the way round it, and a few sunken islands where the shelf breaks up. The fish move between those three through the day, and the angler who follows them does better than the one who anchors and waits.
The shoals are where to start, in the weeks after ice-off. Look for the line where white marl gives way to dark water. Trout cruise that edge and slide up onto the flat to feed on chironomids, and on a calm morning you can watch them do it. Anchor just off the edge and cast up onto the shelf, or sit right on it in a few metres of water.
The weed bed is the find most people pass on their way out to the deep water. Smaller fish rise along its edge in late spring, bigger ones hold inside it, and when mayflies start coming off in the early afternoon the whole edge can wake up at once. Fish it with a short leader and keep the anchor quiet.
The sunken islands and the drop into the basin are for midsummer, when the shallows warm and the fish go down. This is slow, long-leader water, and it is where the lake’s reputation for difficulty comes from.
The campground on the north shore puts you on all three. Stay a few days and the lake starts to explain itself; when it won’t, the smaller lake up the hill is at the end of a rough road.
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.
When to fish it
The rules list no closure for the lake; check in-season changes before you go. The ice usually sits from November into May, and the first weeks of open water are the best of the year on the shoals: go early rather than late, since the fishing can tail off by the end of May. Through July and August look deeper, along the drop-offs and sunken islands. September and October go unreported, but on the pattern of the valley’s other lakes the shoals are worth trying again as the water cools. Wind is the thing that ruins a day here, because it makes anchoring and casting hard; a calm day after a blow is worth waiting for.
How to fish it
One fly at a time. Start with a chironomid pupa under an indicator at the shoal edge, set so the fly hangs just off the marl. If nothing takes in twenty minutes, change colour (green, then red, then chrome with a black rib) before you change depth. Still nothing: swap to a small olive leech under the same indicator, or on a slow-sinking line stripped in short pulls along the drop. Sometimes the trout are on the shoal itself and the deep edge is empty. If you can see fish on the white, move up and shorten the leader.
When mayflies are on the water, change to an adult mayfly dry and cast ahead of a rising fish’s line, not on top of the last ring. In summer, fish the same chironomid or leech over the sunken islands on a long leader or a full sinking line. A throat pump on your first fish tells you more than any fly box.
Access and safety
From Highway 5A, turn east just past the south end of Stump Lake onto Peterhope Lake Road, signed from the highway. It is a maintained gravel road, about 7.5 km to the north-shore campground, and logging trucks use it. The campground is a fee site with two launches, sun on most sites and room for motorhomes and big fifth wheels; bring cash. Wind comes up fast on open water, and the lake is cold after ice-off, so wear a life jacket in a small boat.