Lardeau River

The Lardeau runs about 45 km from the south end of Trout Lake, at Gerrard, down a quiet valley to the Duncan River and the head of Kootenay Lake. It is a modest river with a famous fish. The Gerrard rainbow, the kokanee-eating trout that made Kootenay Lake's name, spawns nowhere else: every one of them comes up the Duncan and the Lardeau to the gravel at the Trout Lake outlet in spring, and the young fish rear in the river for their first years before they drop to the lake. Since 1960 a Gerrard Guardian has counted the spawners from shore every spring. The river also carries a fall run of kokanee from the lake, and bull trout and resident rainbows that feed on them.

Fish it in two seasons. In spring, from April into June, the big rainbows push up toward Gerrard before the snowmelt. The freshet then runs from May through July, when the river is high and cold. Late summer and fall are the gentler season: the water drops and clears, the kokanee spawn, and rainbow trout and bull trout sit below the redds. Egg patterns, nymphs and streamers do most of the work. Read the Marblehead gauge near the bottom of the river for the trend: the river runs many times its fall flow at the June peak. The upper river is the easier walk-in water from Highway 31. The lower river braids and stacks wood, and it is often floated by raft.

The rules here are unusual, and they explain a lot about the fishery now. Kootenay Lake's kokanee collapsed in the mid-2010s, and the province judged that too many big rainbows and bull trout were eating what was left. To rebuild the kokanee it has netted spawning Gerrards, run prize programs that reward anglers for keeping them, and raised quotas: the 2025-2027 synopsis lets you keep 5 rainbow trout and 2 bull trout a day of any size on the Lardeau, all year, with no spring closure and no winter catch and release. You do not have to keep them. The water from the Trout Lake outlet down to about 600 m below Mobbs Creek is closed, which protects the spawning grounds. Kaslo, about 40 minutes south of Meadow Creek, is the nearest town with full services, and Nelson is about 2 hours away.