Jim Smith Lake

Jim Smith Lake is a 23.8-hectare stillwater at Jim Smith Creek's head, just southwest of Cranbrook in a BC Parks day-use area and campground. It is small enough to fish from a float tube or canoe in an afternoon, non-motorized by regulation, and it carries two distinct fisheries in the same water: a stocked rainbow and kokanee program, and a resident largemouth bass population that has made the lake a local warmwater destination in its own right.

The water

The lake sits at the head of Jim Smith Creek, which carries its outflow down through Cranbrook's urban network into Joseph Creek and on to the St. Mary River. Provincial fish-inventory and stocking records list Jim Smith Lake and Jim Smith Creek together as a single connected system: 146 direct fish observations on the creek track closely with what BC Parks and Visit Cranbrook describe on the lake itself, led by rainbow trout with a real largemouth bass presence, plus reported Burbot and invasive yellow perch.

The fishing

BC Parks and Visit Cranbrook both bill Jim Smith Lake as a public fishery for "jumbo" rainbow trout and largemouth bass, fished from the docks and shoreline as much as from a boat. The two species call for different approaches. For the stocked rainbow and kokanee, work a small Chironomid under an indicator or a slow-trolled Balanced Leech over the shoals, the standard approach on any small East Kootenay put-and-take lake. For largemouth bass, work the docks, weed edges and shallow structure with a Woolly Bugger or streamer worked slow, the standard warmwater approach where a dedicated bass hatch chart has not been confirmed here.

Access and the rules

The lake sits inside Jimsmith Lake Park, a BC Parks campground and day-use area with docks and shoreline access just southwest of Cranbrook. Boating is non-motorized only, paddle or electric motor, so a float tube or canoe covers the whole lake without difficulty.

Stocking

Jim Smith Lake has been stocked since 1923, with 123 recorded releases on file through 2026. The modern program is a rainbow and kokanee put-and-take fishery: Fraser Valley strain rainbow trout released as spring catchables most years, alongside a run of kokanee fry (recent broodstock from Norbury Creek and the Lussier River) as a forage and put-grow fishery of its own. Westslope cutthroat and brook trout appear earlier in the record but have not been stocked recently, last released in 2004 and 1996 respectively; any fish of those species now would be older residuals rather than part of the active program. The full release history, by species and year, is below.