If a question starts with "what's happening under the surface of this lake," you start with Brian Chan. A retired fisheries biologist from the Kamloops region — the beating heart of BC's interior stillwater fishery — Chan spent a career studying exactly the water most anglers only guess at, and then spent a second career teaching the rest of us how to read it. His great gift is translation: turning limnology into a leader length, a depth, and a fly.
The science under the surface
The interior's marl lakes are nutrient factories, and Chan explains them as an ecosystem rather than a puzzle — thermoclines, shoal structure, insect emergences and the trout that time their lives around them. Understand why the fish are where they are, his teaching goes, and the tactics follow almost on their own.
▶ Still Water Fly Fishing Secrets for Slow Days — Rise / Brian Chan
Deep-line chironomids
Chan's signature contribution is precise depth control on stillwater: a long leader under a fixed indicator, holding a chironomid pupa motionless at the exact depth the fish are feeding — sometimes thirty feet down. It is the technique behind our chironomid-under-indicator page, and no one explains the rigging better.
▶ Deep Line Chironomid Setup — a Brian Chan pro tip
Known for
Sources & further reading: riseformflyfishing.com and the Stillwater Fly Fishing Store. Videos © their respective creators, embedded from YouTube.