Mustang Lake

Mustang Lake

We who enjoy the out doors live our lives in three modes; remembering past outing, enjoying and outing or planning a future outing. I suppose my bothers and cousin will likely kill me if they see this photo of our catch from Mustang Lake near Wells, B.C. It was a trip to remember, though!

It was late August and we were up before the birds picking up Jackie Surinac, before the sun even thought of cresting the hills. With my three brothers, cousin Garnet, Jackie and Dad that made seven of us crammed into the “52” Pontiac.

We headed north out of town on an old road, past the creek into Cornish Lake and up a mountain. As dawn was breaking we saw a blue grouse with its red patch, passed an old cabin, and finally parked. The trail wasn‘t much, but we made our way down a slope and finally began to wade through a creek meandering through some willow. The cold water was a bit much for Eric, so he ended up on Dad’s shoulders. Ray, my oldest brother, then carried the .303 rifle, for we were in grizzly country. Apparently, the previous summer a fisherman was attack by a couple of grizzly bears but was fortunate enough to be carrying a rifle.
I guess we trekked for about an hour, until finally we arrived at the lake. No sooner had we lit a fire and pulled out the thermos and sandwiches when the first camp robbers arrived. Soon they were landing on our hands taking bread from our fingers. How they know when to show up in these remote spots is always a mystery.

Warmed up, we turned our attention to the lake encircled by tall pines. The shoreline was somewhat weedy, but there were a couple of decent rafts with canvas pieces loosely suspended in the middle. We were soon to find out why.

Every cast resulted in two or three strikes: it didn’t really seem to matter what we used, but we mostly used our favourite a small candle-fish lures. We lost a lot of fish, but were not too concerned. As you can see we did make it home with our limit, which was a welcome change from moose meat.

We took turns using the rafts and standing by the fire warming up and grabbing another bite to eat. By early afternoon we were ready for the return trip through the cold creek and back to the car.

I tried to find this lake and Cornish Lake in the Fish Wizard but did not have any luck. Wingdam Lake (Sawmill Lake) did show up and it held some very nice fish. One day I will have the time to head back to Wells and attempt to revisit these lakes.

A few years after this trip, I made it into Cornish Lake. This was much closer to Wells and the trail was a little drier, although there were a few muddy spots. This lake had a fairly reedy shoreline those fishing from shore got wet feet, but we were easily able to carry an inflatable rubber boat into the lake. The fish here were much more selective, but also a lot bigger than at Mustang Lake.

These are just a few of the small lakes in the Wells - Barkerville area, which is better known for the historic town of Barkerville and the Boron Lake Chain which is something over a hundred miles long and requires several days and reservations. If you are headed up that way on a holiday, give yourself a little extra time to research and find a few of these smaller lakes. Perhaps you may want to consider making it a moose hunting trip as well, for they do love feeding in many of the local lakes.