Also near Kamloops, Peter Hope is one of my favorite lakes. Small enough that you can get from one end to the other in a few minutes with a 9.9 hp outboard, but big enough that you can usually get a little bit of water to yourself, Peter Hope has Pennask and Blackwater rainbows that can grow big, but average out in the 15-to 18-inch range. When the chironomids hatch in May, skilled anglers can have 50 fish days. An overstocking program has now been addressed, but we will have to wait to see if this improves the quality of its fish.
The current fishing at Peter Hope answers an age-old assumption: If something is good then more of it is better, right?
Well, when it comes to stocking British Columbia lakes, this isn’t the case. Way back in The Western Angler Haig-Brown warned of the dangers of overzealous stocking programs. He told of “Lake X”, home to a small population of whoppers that rose to dry flies during the annual sedge hatch. “Fish of six, eight and ten pounds were commonly taken on the dry fly,” he wrote. “In 1939 a fish of 17-1/4 pounds. came up to a dry sedge.” Under the mistaken assumption that dumping in more fish would lead to even more monsters, someone dumped 75,000 fry into the lake. Within a few years those fish, combined with the naturally reproducing ones already present, gobbled up many of the bugs that made the lake famous for its sedge hatches, and the marvelous fishing disappeared.
In 2014 I spent a week in May at Peter Hope, one of BC’s best known fly fishing lakes. Peter Hope has a reputation as a challenging lake, and like Lake X, it occasionally produced trophy fish on dry flies. When I arrived the word on the marl flats was that fishing was good for 14-to16-inch fish, though bigger ones could be seen cruising the shallows. I had a good day fishing the marl shoals for smaller fish, but a friend rowed out beyond the drop off and seemed to be doing as well as me, though I couldn’t see the size of the fish.
The next day I decided to join him in the deeper water and routinely hooked fish between three and four pounds, with several touching five. My best was in the seven-to eight-pound range, a fish that made me forget that most mistakes are made when fish are a few feet from the boat. The Stillwater Ninja joined us for a few days and netted one that measured 28 inches long, a fish of over nine pounds.
On the drive out we wondered what the next year would bring, anticipating a return of the glory days of giants on dry flies. But unknown to us, the lake had been stocked with far too many fish—as many as 30,000 in a year–and eventually this caught up with us. For the next several years we noticed the size and condition of the fish starting to deteriorate. We would still find bigger fish if length was the determining factor, but they were skinny. Anything over 18 inches had a big head and snaky body, the sure sign of overstocking. We returned for five more years, hoping to see a change, but things kept getting worse. Sadly, someone hadn’t read their Haig-Brown, and we were forced to re-learn past lessons. On the drive out last year we decided that 2019 would be our last season on Peter Hope.