Lamb Creek is a tributary of the Moyie River in the Kootenay Lake watershed, running roughly 22 km before it joins the Moyie. Provincial fish-inventory data records westslope cutthroat, bull trout, rainbow trout, cutthroat, dolly varden and Kokanee here, and the province topped the creek up with a kokanee and rainbow trout stocking programme that ran from 1981 to 1998. No guide report or access note is on file for it.
The water
Lamb Creek runs stream order 4 (mid-range on a scale that goes from 1 for a headwater trickle to 6+ for a full river) for about 22 km before it meets the Moyie River, itself a much larger tributary of the Kootenay River. Provincial channel-geometry data puts the median channel width at about 7.5 m (moderate, not a narrow headwater trickle) and the median gradient at about 2.01% (moderate, neither flat meadow water nor a steep canyon creek), with a peak mean-annual discharge of roughly 1.028 m³/s (low flow). Four named tributaries feed it: Little Lamb Creek, Whitney Creek, Gold Hill Creek and Tate Creek. Provincial fish-inventory data records 48 fish observations on Lamb Creek itself, across westslope cutthroat, bull trout, rainbow trout, cutthroat, dolly varden and kokanee.
Stocking
For an angler weighing the drive, the stocking record is the closest thing to a fishing report Lamb Creek has. Between 1981 and 1998 the province planted it seventeen times, putting in 632,119 fish. Kokanee fry dominate the record: five plantings of 100,000 fry apiece in 1981, 1985, 1994, 1995 and 1998, plus smaller kokanee top-ups in 1983 and 1985, the pattern of spawning-channel or population-enrichment work rather than a catchable put-and-take fishery. A parallel, much smaller rainbow trout programme ran alongside it through the 1980s, mostly yearling and fry releases of 1,200 to 3,000 fish, with one larger fall-fry plant of 34,940 in 1993. Both programmes stopped after 1998, and nothing in the record confirms whether either left a self-sustaining population behind.
Lamb Creek — 632,119 fish stocked, 1981–1998
Rainbow Trout, Kokanee. Source: Province of BC — FIDQ / FISS Fish Releases via the Freshwater Fisheries Society of BC.
| Year | Rainbow Trout | Kokanee |
|---|---|---|
| 1998 | · | 100,000 |
| 1995 | · | 100,000 |
| 1994 | · | 100,000 |
| 1993 | 34,940 | · |
| 1990 | 3,000 | · |
| 1989 | 3,000 | · |
| 1987 | 3,000 | · |
| 1986 | 3,000 | · |
| 1985 | 2,000 | 125,000 |
| 1984 | 2,000 | · |
| 1983 | 2,000 | 51,000 |
| 1982 | 2,000 | · |
| 1981 | 1,179 | 100,000 |
The fishing
With no guide report, shop account or current survey on file, Lamb Creek is best treated as an exploratory small stream rather than a planned destination. Creeks of this size (moderate width, moderate gradient, low flow) typically fish with short drifts, a buoyant attractor dry over a light dropper worked through the pocket water and the heads of pools, the standard small-stream approach used across the Moyie drainage. Match the fly box to the season and confirm current conditions locally before committing a day.
Read the chart, not a report
Conditions
- Navigability: wade-to-small-drift water by the numbers (median channel width ~7.5 m, moderate; median gradient ~2.01%, moderate; peak mean-annual discharge ~1.028 m³/s, low flow); no ground report confirms how it actually fishes.
- Stocking: 632,119 fish across 17 releases, 1981 to 1998 (chart above); nothing recorded since.
Access and the rules
No access point, road or put-in is confirmed for Lamb Creek. It drains into the Moyie River within the Kootenay Lake watershed, so the general Region 4 rules for that drainage apply unless a water-specific exception is listed in the current synopsis.
