Late in August the salmon come up out of Shuswap Lake, and for a few weeks the river below Mabel Lake, around Cooke Creek, carries fish you can watch from a bridge. The water is clear, the valley floor is fields and cattle under the cliffs above Enderby, and the trout and whitefish that live here all year are still in the runs.
The run is the part people know. The river is longer than that, and it helps to see how it is built: three lakes and two dams cut it into three rivers. It rises in the Monashee Mountains and runs into Sugar Lake. It leaves over a dam, swings south past Cherryville and Lumby, drops through a second dam at Shuswap Falls and turns north into Mabel Lake. Out of Mabel it heads west through farm country to Mara Lake.
The lower river, from Mabel Lake down past Enderby, is the place to start. It leaves the lake through a stretch of whitewater, then settles into long runs and gravel bars with signed launches and a forest campground along the road. Rainbows and whitefish are in it all year and salmon come through from late summer. On hot days most of the traffic on it is tubes and kayaks.
The middle river, between the two dams, is easy to drive past. It is smaller and quicker, in a wooded valley with a falls and a few picnic sites, and it has one thing the lower river doesn’t: the dam at Shuswap Falls stops the salmon, so the water above it belongs to trout, whitefish and char.
The upper river above Sugar Lake is a mountain stream at the end of a long gravel road, small fish in cold water, in grizzly country. It has the shortest season of the three and the fewest anglers, and it fishes best in July and August once the snowmelt has dropped out.
The last stretch above Mara Lake is closed to fishing all year, so the lower river ends for you at Mara Bridge.
Begin below Mabel Lake, near where Cooke Creek comes in, in early September, with the salmon moving underneath you.
Water and habitat
Below Mabel Lake the river drops through Skookumchuck Rapids, then spreads into riffles, gravel bars and long, slow pools through the farmland, with logs and sweepers on the outside of the bends. Trout and whitefish sit on the seams where fast water slides past slow, at the heads of runs and along the drop-off at the edge of a gravel bar. In the big flat pools near town, look at the tailouts, where the water speeds up again and food is funnelled to them.
The middle river runs between two dams, and they set its flow: water in the spillway at Shuswap Falls can rise suddenly and without warning. Above Sugar Lake the river is a cold snowmelt stream of pocket water and small pools, hard to fish while it is high.
When to fish it
From Mara Bridge up to Sugar Lake the river is exempt from the spring closure that shuts Okanagan streams from 1 April to 30 June. That makes April through June the time for the middle river along the Lumby-Mabel Lake Road and the lower river around Cooke Creek, between bouts of runoff that bring the water up big and coloured.
July and August are dry-fly months on the middle river around Bessette Creek and the lower river around Cooke Creek, and the only months the upper river is worth the drive. Above Sugar Lake there is no fishing from 1 April to 30 June or from 1 September to 31 October, and bait is banned there at all times.
From late August into September the lower river has the salmon. There is no fishing 50 m upstream and 50 m downstream of Trinity Bridge, near Ashton Creek, from 15 June to 15 November, so fish the runs around Cooke Creek or down toward Enderby instead.
November through March is whitefish time on the lower river, around Enderby where Highway 97A crosses, with the banks to yourself.
How to fish it
You fish one fly at a time here. When the water has cleared after runoff, start with a size 12 or 14 Elk Hair Caddis or Stimulator, cast up and across into the seam at the head of a run, and let it drift without drag along the edge of the fast water. If nothing comes up after a few drifts, change to a bead-head Pheasant Tail or Hare’s Ear, lengthen the leader, and dead-drift it close to the bottom through the same seam. Then take a step down and do it again.
For whitefish, fish a small bead-head nymph deep and slow through the tailouts and the soft water inside a bend; in clear water you can often spot the schools before you cast. For char, swing a streamer across the deep water below a riffle and let it hang at the end of the swing. On the lower river, wade the gravel bars and fish the far seam from the inside of the bend.
Access and safety
The lower river is reached from Enderby along the Mabel Lake road. Its signed water accesses include Brandt’s Hand Launch, Cooke Creek Recreation Site, the Riverside Park launch, Grindrod Park and Mara Bridge. Much of the bank is private property, so use the signed accesses. Skookumchuck Rapids, just below the lake, run Class IV at high water and Class II at low water, no place for an inflatable. Below them, watch for logs and sweepers.
The middle river is reached on the Lumby-Mabel Lake Road, which passes Shuswap Falls Recreation Area, with parking, a launch and a portage trail. The Shuswap River Picnic Area is 5 km west of Cherryville on Highway 6, with a portage around a dangerous chute about 2 km downstream. These sites are open to vehicles from May to October, and you can walk in the rest of the year. Stay out of the spillway channel and away from the dam structures.
The upper river is past Sugar Lake, up Sugar Lake Road from Cherryville and onto the forest service road, with recreation sites on the lake and at Greenbush Lake, at kilometre 56. This is grizzly habitat.