On a still morning at the head of Powell Lake, snowmelt creeks pour off the mountains into a long fjord of fresh water, and trout hang in the fast water where each one meets the lake. By noon the wind usually finds you. By then you want to be in a bay, or already heading back.
The river the town is named for hardly counts as a river. It is a short drop from a dam at the foot of the lake, past the mill, into salt water, and it is often called one of the shortest rivers in the world. Everything worth casting a fly at is above the dam. Think of it in three parts: the lower lake beside town, where the launches are; the long body of the lake running north between cliffs, with a mountainous island in the middle; and the rivers that feed its far end.
Start on the lower lake. Three launches put you on the water a few minutes from town, and the shoreline drop-offs and creek mouths near them hold cutthroat, the lake’s main fish. A small boat or a float tube is enough here, early or late in the day when the lake lies flat.
The head of the lake is a long run by boat, past float cabins and rock walls, and few people make it. Rainbows and cutthroat gather where the snowmelt streams come in, and on a quiet day you may never share a creek mouth with anyone.
The find is off to one side. A winding river leads out of the lake into Goat Lake, and at the head of Goat Lake the Eldred River comes in through fast water, with good numbers of cutthroat and rainbows. You can also reach it overland, on logging roads to a climbers’ camp below the rock walls of the Eldred valley.
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.
Water and habitat
Powell Lake is deep and cold, a chain of basins, and in some of them old seawater still lies trapped at the bottom. The dam raised the lake early in the last century, and where the Goat River enters there is still a forest of stumps from logging done before the flooding. Beyond the Goat, the lake is fed by the upper Powell River, the Daniels River, and creeks such as Beartooth and Olsen.
All that depth matters for where trout sit. Cool water lets cutthroat stay up on the shoals and at the river mouths through spring; as the surface warms they drop down the drop-offs and the lake gets harder to read. The creek mouths hold fish longer, probably because the inflow runs cold, and the current stirs food into the lake.
How to fish it
At a creek mouth, hold the boat off the edge of the current where fast water slows into the lake. Cast across the seam and let a stickleback pattern or a Woolly Bugger swing and sink along the line where the current dies; fish wait on that edge for whatever washes down. If nothing takes after a few swings, go deeper: change to a leech on a sinking line and work it slowly along the nearest drop-off. When trout show on the surface, switch to an Elk Hair Caddis or a Tom Thumb, and an ant along shaded shoreline.
On calm evenings over the shoals near town, a chironomid hung under an indicator and left nearly still will take fish that ignore anything moving.
In the Eldred, stay on the edges. Work the softer water beside the fast runs with a bugger dead-drifted and then swung, and move on after a few casts if a seam stays empty.
Access and safety
On the lower lake, the Mowat Bay launch in Cranberry has pay parking and washrooms, and the launch at the Shinglemill, across the Wildwood bridge, has pay parking for vehicles and trailers. Haywire Bay Regional Park, a short drive north of town on the southeast shore, has a launch and a campground whose individual sites are first-come, first-served, plus a trail to Inland Lake.
The lake is big enough to hurt you. Afternoon wind and boat wake can build quickly, and along the cliffs there is often nowhere easy to come ashore, so start back before noon. Going up to Goat Lake, follow the markers and buoys through the stump forest, and know that the Goat River runs shallow and hard to get through at low water.
For the Eldred by road, take Dixon Road from Lang Bay to Goat Lake Main. The logging roads are signed in miles, and the climbers’ camp sits around mile 34. These are working roads: check conditions before you go and give logging trucks the road.
Regulations
Powell River has no listing of its own in the Lower Mainland (Region 2) water-specific table, so provincial and Region 2 rules govern it; check the regulations and in-season changes before you fish. Across the system you may use one line with one artificial fly. Every stream in Region 2, the Eldred included, needs a single barbless hook all year, and wild trout and char caught in streams must be released. For Powell Lake and Goat Lake, check the regulations for each lake’s own rules, including any winter closure, before you keep a fish. The salt water below the dam is tidal, where the freshwater rules don’t apply and Fisheries and Oceans Canada sets the salmon rules.
When the lake blows up, there is still Inland Lake, a walk from Haywire Bay, or Haslam Lake, the cutthroat lake on the good road northeast of town, where the bottom is full of snags.