Best of BC Lake Fishing

Matt Hartman is a freelance editor and cataloguer, running Hartman Cataloguing, Editing and Indexing Services.

Bruhn’s pieces have long been featured in such magazines as B.C.
Outdoors, Pacific Yachting, and Fishing World. He has assembled data
about an astounding number of B.C. lakes—more than 500 of them—and
arranged them “in chapters which follow provincial Fisheries Branch
management regions.” Regions covered are Vancouver Island, the Lower
Mainland, Thompson-Nicola, the Okanagan, the Chilcotin, the Cariboo, the
Kootenays, the Skeena, and Omineca-Peace. Accompanying Bruhn’s short
descriptions are drawings of fish and various lake insects by Ian
Forbes, and locator maps provided by the B.C. Ministry of Environment.

Each chapter is introduced by an “overview of the region and one or
two topics of particular interest to the area.” The descriptions
themselves are limited to directions for access (some of the lakes
require sizable hikes or climbs to reach them) and information about the
kinds of fish to be found. Underlying each section is an emphasis on the
appreciation of the aquatic environment and on the understanding of the
need for proper husbandry of lake stocks. Bruhn is both fisherman and
conservationist, and his love of the B.C. outdoors is evident throughout
the book. A good choice for the public library.