Caverhill Fly Fishing Lodge

$1,740 per person for 3 nights, $2,320 for 4 and $2,900 for 5, plus tax, and the same per person whether you come alone or as a couple ($3,480, $4,640 and $5,800 for two). The whole lodge for up to ten guests, the private and family packages, is $17,400, $23,200 and $29,000, which works out to the same $580 a night per person; a party of 11 or 12 is quoted on request. Meals, boats, rods and the sauna are in the price; licences, flies and drinks are not.

Five log cabins along the lakeshore for a maximum of twelve guests: three sleep two and two sleep three, with the beds made up as twins or one king. Each is a single room with a covered porch, an airtight woodstove, propane lights, fresh linens and a down quilt, an environmental toilet and a cold-water sink. You are assigned a private washroom in the main wash house a few steps away.

Drive north from Kamloops, 103 km and about an hour and forty-five minutes, the last 23 km on a well-graded gravel road that any car can manage (carry a spare tyre and a jack). A detailed map comes with your confirmation. Park at the lakeside lot and the lodge boat, the Caverhill Queen II, brings you across; there is no road to the lodge and no other building on the lake.

Pickups are at 1:00, 3:00 and 5:00 pm; confirm yours 24 hours before you arrive. Check out is before 11:00 am. Kamloops airport has Air Canada and WestJet flights from Vancouver (55 minutes) and Calgary (an hour and a quarter) and the usual rental cars; the lodge can put you in touch with a taxi van, SUV limo or helicopter, and floatplanes can land at the lodge.

Your stay starts with supper on the day you arrive and ends with a bag lunch for the drive home. After the boat ride and a short orientation, experienced anglers are pointed at the trail network and sent on their way; novices get their gear and fly selection checked, a lesson in tying on a leader, and a run-through of the small outboards on the three motorboat lakes.

From then on the days are yours: hike to a lake with tackle and a packed lunch and find a rowboat waiting at the dock, take a motorboat, paddle a kayak, or sauna before dinner. In June it is light until 10 pm.

No. Caverhill is unguided stillwater fishing from small boats, and the price reflects it. Marlene and Larry orient you to the lakes, trails and the best flies to start with, rods and nets are lent, and flies are sold at the lodge. Almost all the fishing here is from a boat; the lake bottoms are too soft to wade.

The lodge fishes from 10 June to mid-September, at 4,600 feet. The ice is usually off by mid-May and by 10 June the lakes have turned over and the Kamloops rainbows are on the emerging insects, with surface feeding on cool days. July brings the larger hatches and dragonfly and damselfly nymphs below the surface on bright days; early August is mostly sub-surface until evening. Mid-August to early September has sunny days, cool nights, flying ants on the surface and fish in peak condition, and the season closes in mid-September with a last frenzy of feeding and the odd dusting of snow.

Marlene is the executive chef, raised by an Austrian mother who cooked in France and England and a Swedish-trained pastry-chef father. The weekly grocery run stops at three farms for produce, meat and eggs; a sample dinner runs soup, salad, camembert in filo, beef bourguignon or spiced pork tenderloin, and a lemon mousse or apple torte. The lodge is not licensed, so bring your own wine, beer and mix; ice is chipped and ready on the sideboard.

Yes, a BC freshwater licence, sold at the lodge or online in advance. The lodge quotes $52.50 for an eight-day licence for a guest from outside Canada; residents pay less.

The lakes are reached on foot along the lodge's trail network, so you want to be comfortable walking with a pack and a rod; rowboats are waiting at each lake. The lodge publishes no minimum age and sells family packages for the whole lodge. There is a lodge dog, and one guest pet is accepted with prior approval. A child travelling with one parent needs notarised permission from the other.

The lodge runs on solar power with no generator; the cabins have propane lights and a woodstove. The lodge describes internet access as limited, and it is set up to host a morning meeting with a coffee break if a private group wants one.

The lodge's own list: passport, waterproof hiking boots and wool socks, rain- and wind-proof parka and pants, long underwear, warm hat and gloves, hiking clothes, shorts, a swimsuit for the sauna and the lake, sunglasses and sunhat, medications and spare glasses, insect repellent and sunscreen, camera and spare batteries, your fishing gear with spare rods and reels and a selection of flies and lures, and a flotation jacket if you prefer your own (cartridge and standard life jackets are at the lodge). Supplies are not available at the lodge. It suggests a current tetanus shot: fish hooks are the liability of a fishing trip.

Gratuities are not included; the lodge suggests 5 to 10%, paid with the balance when you leave.