Stocked lake planner — when the trout truck is next due

Lower Mainland, Sea to Sky and Vancouver Island · September 2026 – June 2027 · catchable-size rainbow trout only · reviewed 11 October 2026

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The stocking year at a glance

How to read a bar

The bar is the answer

  • The bar is a 28-day window: two weeks either side of the estimate. The tick inside it is the single most likely day, and it is the part you should trust least.
  • The estimate is the median day of the year that lake has been stocked on over its last three years, projected forward. Nothing is trained, and no weather, water temperature or hatchery plan goes into it.
  • Three years beat five, ten and the whole record when they were all tested against a held-out year — recent enough to follow a programme that drifts, wide enough that one odd year cannot drag it.

What the shading means

  • Solid — six or more years of history at that lake. About three quarters of these land inside the fortnight.
  • Faded — three to five years. Two thirds land inside the fortnight.
  • Hatched — one or two years. Barely better than a coin flip at a fortnight; treat it as “this lake gets fish some time around then”.
  • Every Lower Mainland lake on this page is solid, most with nineteen or twenty years behind it. The thin ones are all on the Island.

What it cannot tell you

  • Whether a lake is still in the programme is a different question from when. Lakes that have gone two years without fish are left off this page entirely, but a lake dropped this year will still show a bar.
  • Lakes that share a date share a truck. When you see a dozen lakes stacked on one day, that is one route — if it slips, they all slip together, so those bars are not twelve independent guesses.
  • Stocking is not fishing. A lake can get its fish on time and still be unfishable that week: wind, algae, a closed gate, a road washout.

Fishing a lake that has just been stocked

Timing

  • Hatchery catchables go in at around 230 g — roughly half a pound, 25–30 cm. They are catchable the day they land.
  • They stay near the release point — usually the boat launch or the closest road access — for the first few days, then spread out and get harder.
  • The fall drop is the quiet one: fewer fish, fewer people, cooling water. The spring drop is bigger and much busier.
  • Nothing goes in between December and mid-March. That gap on the chart is real, not missing data.

Licence

  • Anyone 16 or older needs a B.C. basic freshwater fishing licence. Under 16 does not.
  • The licence year runs 1 April to 31 March — an annual licence bought in March is worth a few days, not a year.
  • Annual, 8-day and 1-day licences are all sold online.
  • This is the freshwater licence. It is a different licence from the tidal one you need for the beach, and neither covers the other.

Limits

  • Region 2, Lower Mainland: trout/char 4 a day, of which no more than 1 over 50 cm, no more than 2 from streams (hatchery only), and no more than 1 char — none under 60 cm.
  • Region 1, Vancouver Island: trout 4 a day, no more than 1 over 50 cm, no more than 2 from streams (hatchery only). Release all char, Dolly Varden included.
  • Possession is two daily quotas in both regions.
  • Those are the regional defaults. A lake’s own line in the synopsis overrides them, and several lakes here are quota 2 or catch-and-release — look your lake up before you keep anything.

Gear

  • The region-wide single barbless hook rule covers streams, not lakes, in both Region 1 and Region 2. Plenty of individual lakes carry the same rule in their own entry.
  • The Region 1 bait ban is likewise a streams rule, with exceptions.
  • Neither default tells you what your lake requires. The water-specific table in the regional synopsis is the only thing that does.
  • Some of these are city park lakes with their own bylaws on top — float tubes, parking, and hours are set by the park, not the province.

Before you go