In February, while most stillwaters in the interior are still frozen, Shuswap Lake is open apart from the west-end release water, and last year’s salmon fry are already moving through it. Rainbows that wintered deep come up to the beaches to meet them. A small streamer worked within a long cast of shore is doing what the fish are doing.
The lake is big enough that you want its shape before you want a fly. Four arms meet at one narrows. The main arm runs west past Anglemont toward Sorrento; Salmon Arm bends away southwest to the town of the same name; Seymour and Anstey arms reach north into steeper country. At the far west end the lake drains through a short river into Little Shuswap Lake at Chase.
Salmon Arm is the easy place to begin. There are launches in town, and early in the year the shore around Sunnybrae holds rainbows feeding on fry close to the bank.
The west end is the part worth knowing well. A big sockeye river comes in just above the outlet, and every spring its young pour past the mouth and down the short river below, so the rainbows gather there too. That is why the rules protect it hardest: from a line between signs at Henstridge Road and Wharf Road down to a line between signs on the shores of Little Shuswap Lake it is closed from 15 March to 14 May, and catch and release for rainbows and char the rest of the year. In autumn, with the sockeye spawning upstream, you fish it purely for the pull.
Where the four arms meet, at a place called Cinnemousun Narrows, fish travelling between arms have to squeeze through, and it is one of the lake’s productive corners.
The north arms are the open question. Seymour and Anstey run a long way from the towns, and their creek mouths and rock walls are yours to work out.
Little Shuswap, right at Chase, is the small, quiet end of the system, and a good next lake once the big water has had its way with you.
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.
This is a deep, cold lake with most of its feeding near the edges. Trout and char spend much of the year deep, then move shallow when food does: within about 75 feet of the beach while the fry are moving in late winter and spring, and to river and creek mouths when spawned salmon and their eggs wash down in autumn. Creek mouths, rock walls and bottlenecks gather fish; long, featureless shore does not.
Fish and forage
Rainbows are the main fish, with lake trout and bull trout deeper, plus kokanee and whitefish. Salmon drive all of it. Sockeye fry rear in the lake for a year and leave as smolts the next spring, about three inches long and a perfect mouthful for a big rainbow. In autumn the trout and char turn to eggs and salmon flesh near the spawning rivers. The sockeye run is strongest one year in four, and the springs that follow a big run tend to be the best.
When to fish it
February and early March are the cream: no part of the lake is closed, and the fry are moving. From 15 March to 14 May three signed areas are closed: the west end, the whole area north of Albas on Seymour Arm, and the water east of a line between Murdock and Semaphore points to the Highway 1 bridge. Whether the Sunnybrae shore on Salmon Arm lies outside those areas is not settled here, so check the regulations for it before you fish it in spring. In summer the trout drop deep. Autumn brings them back to the mouths, but not in Salmon Arm Bay: west of a line from Engineer’s Point to Sunnybrae Point it is closed from 1 September to 31 December to protect chinook and coho, except from the community pier in the city of Salmon Arm.
How to fish it
This is mostly boat fishing with a fly line. Use a full-sinking line, roughly Type 4 to Type 7, and troll slowly, around 1 to 1.5 miles per hour, near shore. Tie on one small bucktail or a Muddler Minnow; go darker on overcast days and brighter in sun. When it stops working, change size before colour, then slow down and swing closer to the drop-off. At creek mouths and rock walls, stop trolling and cast: let the fly sink along the edge and strip it back up over the lip. In autumn, swap the streamer for a single egg or flesh fly near the mouths. Hold the rod firmly. Strikes on the troll are hard.
Access and safety
Public launches sit at Sicamous, Salmon Arm, Scotch Creek, Magna Bay and Harolds Park on Salmon Arm, though any one of them can be shut for a season, so ask locally before you tow. The west end is a short drive from Chase over the Squilax bridge, which crosses the outlet river. Without a boat, the Salmon Arm community pier is the obvious place to cast. On a lake this size a small boat should stay near shore when wind gets up, and late-winter water is cold enough that a lifejacket is not optional.
Regulations
The Shuswap Lake rules also cover Little Shuswap Lake, the river between them, all four arms and Mara Lake. There is no ice fishing. Bait is banned and hooks must be single and barbless, though anglers on the Salmon Arm community pier are exempt from the bait ban. Outside the west-end release water you may keep one rainbow trout a day, none under 50 cm, five a year, and one char a day, none under 60 cm, five a year; keeping a rainbow over 50 cm or a char over 60 cm needs a Conservation Surcharge Stamp, recorded at once on a paper licence. Lake trout must be released from 15 October to 31 January. Bass and yellow perch are closed to fishing, and salmon rules are set federally. The closed areas are signed and mapped in the synopsis; check it, and any in-season changes, before you go.