Walker Lake - Large Fish - Great Fly Fishing
- Location: Merritt, British Columbia, Canada
Walker Lake, is one of my Favorite Lakes for Fly Fishing.
It's about a 20 minute walk from where you can park and access a trail to the west end of the lake. Mosquito's are fearce, so be aware. Bring a Mosquito net to cover your head and hands, as Repellent does not work on them. The lake is surrounded by lily pads and thick weeds on the inner shore edge. This makes for lots of bugs that the Rainbow Trout feed on and get to be monsters. 10lb Rainbows can be found here, but sometimes the bite is slow as they have so much food in the lake. Schuds can be seen swimming all over the lake. You will see large fish jumping and splashing all day long. Some of these fish have gill lice and this is the reason for them splashing to shake off the lice. This doesn't affect the fish's health. I have eatten fish from this lake, but mostly catch and release.
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Comments
Access? by Haley:
(5 of 5)
I’d like to go here. Does anyone have directions how to access this lake from the North or south side?
Access to Walker Lake by Arnold:
(5 of 5)
You can access walker lake from sunset main turnoff the coquihalla on sunset main. Take the first right over the cattle guard, then turn left. Not far after turning left you will see a little dirt road on the right, take this road. Not far up this road it has another road that is on the left. Take this and drive down it till you cross a little culvert in the road. The road now starts to level out and you will see a little Rock campfire pit and a place to park. The trail to the lake is on the other side of the road. Follow it and you will see trees partly standing that have been left for birds to nest on. This marks the trail across the logged out clearing. Once you cross the clearing to the trees you will see the trail that goes down to the lake. It's only about a 15 minute walk total from where you parked. So once you cross the logged out clearing, then it's only about 5 minutes to the lake. Once at the lake you will see an entry point to the left of the beavers home. Good luck.
Winter kill? by Haley:
(5 of 5)
Those are great instructions, thank you. Have you fished it this year? I wonder if it got winter kill like so many other lakes did.
Winter Kill by Arnold:
(5 of 5)
No I haven't made it up to Walker yet this year. I talked to another person whom fished it about 2 weeks ago. They seen 1 fish jump and had 1 on but lost it. They only seen the one fish jump all day. So its possible it had a small winter kill. I will be going up to Walker soon and will comment back here on its conditions and post a few more photos.
Unfortunately… by Haley:
(5 of 5)
I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but I think this lake got hammered by significant winter kill. The stocking history, fishing regs, buggy conditions and difficult access should make for very good fishing, but sadly this is not the case. I saw no sign of any fish anywhere. No rises, jumps or any hits on the finder. I had one strike from a very small fish, about 8”, and that was it.
The maximum depth is about 17’ which may have been what sealed its fate. A hard freeze like the one we had would kill off larger fish without enough oxygen. Something else that I found to be quite startling were the amount of shrimp in the lake - thousands upon thousands of shrimp. Shrimp will scavenge on dead carcasses, which would explain why I didn’t visibly see any dead fish.
While it remains possible that I simply had back luck, I am not confident to return there with different results for at least a few years until the fish can grow back. Glad I went, but saddened to not see the legendary fish that were mentioned.
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