Culper Lakes

Culper Lake

I like late-fall fishing, but these cold evenings sure keep the furnace going in the tent trailer. It’s late in September and I camped at Solco Lake on one of my explorations into little out-of-the-way lakes. It was warm enough in the sleeping bag, but so cold outside I slept in late. Easy to do when the view outside is vapour coming off the lake. A good case can be made for truck and camper, comfort for all seasons.

Loading the canoe I went back down to the Weyerhaeuser 201 which came up from OK Falls and headed north to the Derenzy forest service road. I then took the Culper Lake forest service road up to the Culper 100 road, which turned for a short distance down the slope. From the Penticton side one can reach the Weyerhaeuser Road by going up the Carmi Road past the Lost Moose Lodge then turning south.

From the end of the road into Culper Lake is was about a kilometer carry. The trail is rather muddy in spots but is generally quite good ,and wide enough for me to make it into the lake with my 18 foot canoe. I dropped the canoe near the shelter, which sits along the shore below a steep slope of broken rock, and headed further along the trail leading to the other end of the lake in search of Upper Culper Lake, which is about half a kilometer from Culper Lake.

This trail is overgrown and very rough and narrow, and eventually petered out before I reached Upper Culper. The trail was reasonably easy to find, however, and I did not even resort to using the GPS. A word of caution though, if you head into this lake be careful; in spite of being fairly heavily treed the ground is quite boggy and it would be very easy to step into a hole and twist an ankle.

Upper Culper Lake is quite small, at the most the size of a football field but likely smaller. It appears to be quite shallow with a fairly thin growth of weeds around the shoreline. Still, I was able to fish between the lily pads for about twenty minutes and in that time landed six small fish about fifteen centimetres in length and had about four times that many strikes. These small rainbow trout were dark and appeared to be spawning, so likely a twenty-five centimetre fish would be a very big one here. I’ll let you know if I have better luck next time into this lake.

While you can carry a canoe into Culper Lake, Upper Culper is better suited to either belly boat or fishing from shore. I will definitely look into getting a belly boat, as with many of these tiny lakes it is often difficult to fish them efficiently from shore. Usually I use my spinning outfit for these explorations as I can use it under most conditions.

Back at Culper Lake I launched the canoe and tried my luck at the outer edges of the lily pads. Again action was quite fast and in forty or so minutes I had about forty strikes and landed three reasonably sized fish. Several of the strikes were very heavy and I’m guessing I’d be looking at fish between thirty and forty centimetres in length. Cold and hungry, with threatening clouds above, it was time to head back to base camp.

Checking stocking records it is quite interesting to note that neither of these lakes show up as being stocked in the last six years, so they must be reproducing naturally. Ideally it would be great to get most lakes back to reproducing naturally. Usually this means a decent stream into or out of the lake, although I have had reports of trout that do not require such conditions.

Co-ordinates Culper Lake N 49 - 24 - 632 W 119 - 27 - 521
Upper Culper N N 49 - 24 - 771 W 119 - 27 - 145

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