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Lying in bed in the Ice House, guest quarters at the Stump Lake Cattle Company, the only sound you can hear is of the stream that runs under the deck. This is the way a fly fisherman likes to go to sleep, lulled by the tones of water running over stone.
Stump Lake, a long, wind swept body of blue water located in the rolling, piney hills between Kamloops and Merritt, is famous for its big rainbow trout. Most of those trout spawn in the creek that runs through the ranchland of the Stump Lake Cattle Company, and the nearby Frolek Ranch. Over the years that valuable little stream has been hard hit by seasonal water withdrawals. The ranches survive on their grazing lands, and the hay crops they grow depend on irrigation. Each spring, depending on when it starts to get hot and dry, the ranches begin to draw down the creek. In some years, Stump Lake Creek has run low early, stranding big spawning rainbows, or causing them to suffocate. Some years it has completely dried up, destroying eggs or trout fry. For ranchers and guests of the Stump Lake Cattle Company, the song of the little stream that runs under the Ice House, near the main ranch home, was becoming increasingly hard to hear, silenced by the upstream pumps that sucked its waters up and sprayed them onto the hay fields. But over the last two years, Derek Tretheway and Rob MacDonald, the new owners of the historic Stump Lake ranch, have been working at a plan to keep the stream running year round. Last spring, in June 2001, the Stump Lake Cattle Co. held a fund raising dinner and dance that raised $165,000 towards the Stump Lake Creek project. The government kicked in another $22,000 through its Habitat Conservation Trust Fund, and Dennis and Ray Frolek, over at Frolek Ranch, chipped in with a generous offer of labour and equipment. This year the Stump Lake Creek won't dry up as usual, because of a lakeside pumping station and couple of kilometers of piping. "What we're going to do," says Mr. Tretheway looking out over his ranch towards the lake, "is simply pump up lake water, and run it back down through the creek. It's never going to run dry again. It's going to be going like this all summer."
Pulling out photos, Mr. Tretheway, a real estate developer from Vancouver who has brought a whole new spin to the ranching game, shows where the Frolek's dug and buried a pipeline in the hay fields. "It's a really neat project. We're excited about it," said Mr. Tretheway, who is not a fisherman. "It was terrible seeing those big trout dying in the creek. And it's much more pleasant to hear the water running." Mo Bradley, a Kamloops fly fishing guide who works with the Stump Lake Guest Ranch, said the idea to restore the creek came about in his discussions with Mr. Tretheway about developing the ranch's fly fishing potential. "He was redeveloping the ranch," he said. "And he was interested in the fishing aspect of it. Once he got going on this project it was incredible what he accomplished."
Mr. Tretheway said that when he first looked at it, he only saw the financial possibilities. You could break up the 83,000 acre ranch and sell its component parts, he figured, making a nice profit. But a funny thing happened to Mr. Tretheway on his way to making the deal. He lived in the old ranch house for a few months, crunching numbers - and fell in love with the place. "There were 28 people living here; the cowboys and their families. I started to say (to his business partners), 'Our plan is not going to work. It will disrupt all these lives. There has to be a better way'." In the end they decided to keep it going as a working cattle ranch, by diversifying. Some prime water front lots were subdivided, and are now being sold. A few beautiful log homes have gone up on the shores of Stump Lake. The new home owners have leased back grazing rights to the ranch. "The homes themselves have a very small footprint," said Mr. Tretheway. "So they don't take away anything from the ranch operation really. We're still running cattle here, the way we always have." The Tretheways also remodeled the ranch buildings, turning the old Ice House and a few other out buildings into beautiful guest cottages. They started offering trail rides, catering to weddings and other special functions. And of course, they started trying to attract fly fishermen. "Incredible," is how Mo Bradley describes fishing in Stump Lake, which offers huge rainbows and Kokanee that typically run two pounds or better. Kokanee are usually small fish which feed on plankton and are of little interest to fly fishers. Unless they grow big. When they get in the two to three pound range they begin to forage more widely and will come eagerly to May fly, chironomid and damsel fly patterns. In Stump, there is amazing fishing at certain times of the year, by casting damsels into the weed beds amidst feeding schools of Kokanee. Mr. Tretheway said most of the people who have expressed interest in the lake front lots being offered by the Stump Lake Cattle Co. are attracted not just by the beautiful scenery, but by the fly fishing too. "One guy who bought a lot told me he waded out front, and caught a seven pound trout, " said Mr. Tretheway. "I guess the idea that you can get fishing like that in your front yard is pretty attractive." With advice from Mo Bradley, the ranch has also started to allow limited access, by paid permit, to a small lake on a plateau above Stump Lake. Fraser Lake may be small and swept by high winds, but it offers incredibly fly fishing for big rainbows. "You can get four, six, eight, ten pound trout and larger up there," said Mo, as he drove me up to the lake one morning.
We set out in a couple of small prams, anchored over thick weed beds - and had marvelous fishing for bright silver Kamloops rainbows that averaged 4 lbs. Mo caught one of about 6 lbs., and later went back without me and took a 33 inch trout. Fraser Lake offers brilliant fishing, but the real story is in the chattering waters of Stump Lake Creek. With it flowing all summer, the trout fishing in Stump Lake should improve dramatically over the next few years. "I'm absolutely thrilled to bits by what's happened to this creek," said Mo as he leaned on a fence and looked down at the bright, chattering stream. "It's absolutely perfect for trout now. I used to walk along here and see huge fish, dead. Now they'll be down in the lake, waiting to get caught." End Note: For more information on the Stump Lake Guest Ranch, go to: http://www.stumplake.com. Mo Bradley guides out of Kamloops and can be reached at: 250-579-9097 |
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At dawn you hear bird song, a horse running and the wind stirring big cottonwoods that shelter Stump Lake Creek, a small stream that has been saved by a remarkable project involving ranchers, fishermen and the provincial government's Habitat Conservation Trust Fund. 
The Stump Lake Cattle Co. was established on the shores of Stump Lake back in 1883. Like many big ranches, it has had an increasingly tough time making a go of it, and a few years ago it was put on the market.
