The water
Barrett Lake sits at the headwaters of Barrett Creek, northwest of Ymir, in the Lower Arrow Lake watershed in BC's West Kootenay. It is a small stillwater, about 6.3 hectares, in the same general country as two other small put-and-take lakes near Ymir, Qua Lake and Silver Lake. No lake survey (depth, clarity) is on file for Barrett, and the roads, launch and parking situation has not been confirmed; treat it as a walk-in or rough-access lake until that is checked locally.
The fishing
Barrett Lake is a put-and-take fishery, not a self-sustaining one. Its entire recorded catch comes from stocked rainbow trout, with 31 releases logged between 1935 and 2024, most recently 2,000 Pennask-strain fry planted on 2024-10-18. That long, steady record (over 101,000 rainbow trout stocked across nine decades) says the lake has held a fishable population of stocked rainbow trout for a very long time, even without a survey on file to describe its depth or structure.
Fish it with standard small-lake stillwater tactics until a local report says otherwise: a chironomid under an indicator worked over the shoals in spring, leech and attractor patterns like a Woolly Bugger fished along any drop-offs as the water warms, and a switch to dry-fly and emerger patterns if you find fish rising in the evening.
Read the stocking record as the fishing report
Stocking
Barrett Lake — 101,680 fish stocked, 1935–2024
Rainbow Trout. Source: Province of BC — FIDQ / FISS Fish Releases via the Freshwater Fisheries Society of BC.
| Year | Rainbow Trout |
|---|---|
| 2024 | 2,000 |
| 2022 | 2,000 |
| 2020 | 2,000 |
| 2018 | 2,000 |
| 2012 | 2,000 |
| 2010 | 2,000 |
| 2008 | 2,000 |
| 2006 | 2,000 |
| 2004 | 2,000 |
| 2002 | 2,000 |
| 2000 | 2,400 |
| 1998 | 2,000 |
| 1996 | 2,000 |
| 1994 | 2,000 |
| 1992 | 2,000 |
| 1991 | 2,000 |
| 1990 | 2,000 |
| 1989 | 2,000 |
| 1988 | 2,000 |
| 1987 | 2,000 |
| 1986 | 2,000 |
| 1985 | 4,000 |
| 1984 | 4,000 |
| 1982 | 6,280 |
| 1978 | 5,000 |
| 1970 | 5,000 |
| 1939 | 15,000 |
| 1937 | 5,000 |
| 1936 | 10,000 |
| 1935 | 5,000 |
Conditions
- Species held: rainbow trout only, all of it stocked; no other species on record.
- Program: put-and-take angling, not a broodstock or kokanee-forage lake.
- Water-quality/health signal: no bathymetry or mollusc survey on file for this lake.
Access and the rules
Access, launch and parking details for Barrett Lake have not been confirmed and still need a field or source check; the coordinate above marks the fish-presence point recorded in the provincial stocking data, not a verified access point. Confirm both the route in and the current regulations before you commit a day to it.
