Knouff Lake

Almost everyone calls this lake Knouff. On the map it is Sullivan Lake, and the real Knouff is a shallow pond just north of it.

The two are joined by a creek that doubles as a spawning channel. Knouff proper is barely five metres deep and normally loses its fish to winter kill. Trout only get in when spring runoff is high enough to open the channel.

The fishery here was made on purpose. By one account local ranchers moved a few spawning rainbow trout in from a Paul Lake stream in 1917, and within a few years fly fishermen were arriving to see what had happened. The lake now has a fly named after it, the Knouff Lake Special, tied for its sedge hatch.

The whole valley was logged from shoreline to mountaintop early in the twentieth century. It grew back so completely that the cutting is now hard to see.