Premier is the lake other East Kootenay stillwaters are measured against. It sits in its own 229-hectare provincial park north of Skookumchuck, roughly 72 km up Highway 93/95 from Cranbrook, and it fishes the way it does for one reason: it is stocked hard, and it has been for a century.

For an angler weighing where to go, the stocking record is the fishing report. Here is every recorded release into Premier — the story is the modern put-grow program, a steady wall of Blackwater rainbow topped up every spring.

That consistency is the whole point. Premier is a put-grow fishery: the ~55,000 diploid Blackwater yearlings dropped each spring are next season's fish, growing on the lake's rich chironomid and leech forage to a 30–35 cm average, with the odd fish pushing 50 cm. The rainbow you catch this summer are last year's cohort; the fresh yearlings are why it will still be good next year.