No Whitetail Lake-specific exception appears in the Region 4 table, so the regional default applies: trout/char daily quota 5, with no more than 1 rainbow or cutthroat over 50 cm. Confirm the current synopsis before you fish.

The lake covers roughly 162 hectares by the 1959 provincial survey, running to a maximum depth of 19.2 m with a mean of 9.8 m. That is real depth for a stillwater this size, with a defined basin rather than a shallow bowl, so expect a shoal-and-drop-off structure: skinny water for the spring bite, then a deep core to fall back on once the shallows warm. Whitetail Creek drains the lake north into the Columbia system through the Radium-Invermere-Fairmont corridor, the same stretch of country that carries Dutch Creek and its tributary family.

For an angler judging whether the drive is worth it, the release record is the fishing report. Whitetail has been stocked since 1961, 103 recorded releases and roughly 866,000 fish, and it has run almost entirely on rainbow trout since: brook trout appear only in three plants between 1967 and 1969, long enough ago that no current population is confirmed. The modern program stacks two rainbow strains every spring, most recently on April 29, 2026: 10,000 Blackwater-strain yearlings from the Dragon Lake hatchery alongside 2,000 Pennask-strain yearlings from Beaver. That combined ~12,000-fish spring plant, on top of decades of Gerrard, Duncan River and Fraser Valley-strain releases in earlier years, is what earns the "trophy lake" description.

Whitetail turns over and ices off in April, and reports from the region's stillwater rotation put it fishing well through that early window: balanced leeches carry the lake before the hatch gets going, then chironomid and Callibaetis mayfly hatches pick up by mid-May as fish move onto the shoals. Work a chironomid under an indicator over the shoal margins early, switch to a balanced leech or bead-head nymph as the turnover settles, and use the depth the 1959 survey shows, out to 19 m, to find fish once the shallows warm and the shoal bite fades. Whitetail is named alongside Premier, Whiteswan, Moose, Echo and Lazy lakes as one of the East Kootenay's go-to early-season small stillwaters.

Whitetail Lake has a boat launch and dock, confirmed by a Freshwater Fisheries Society of BC photo from the lake. The nearest town is Canal Flats, at the height of land between the Columbia and Kootenay valleys; confirm the exact access road and any seasonal restrictions before you commit a day, since no detailed route description is on file for this lake.