Skip to content
Join our Newsletter

Feature - A Cutthroat Murder Mystery:

The Fish of Alta Lake

I arrived in Whistler in the fall of 1981 and was immediately intrigued by the fact that Alta Lake was once considered fishermen's Mecca. But my first experience on the lake only produced a few 10", worm-infested fish. As someone who grew up catching rainbow trout in the 3 to 15-pound range on the Great Lakes, I found it amazing this lake could once have supported four lodges and attracted so many fishermen. I knew things had changed a lot but found it confusing; given very little modern angling pressure, the lake's mature fish were so small.

This was a mystery. What had changed in the lake? I asked around and several explanations surfaced.

According to some people, there was possibly a sewage problem from lakeside septic fields. That problem cuts both ways though, often providing abundant growth and large fish.

Others pointed to many spawning tributaries that had been changed and altered. But usually, when natural recruitment diminishes, fish become larger. Not the case in present day Alta Lake, where 12-inch fish would be considered large.

Another theory related to an over-abundance of sticklebacks. Maybe these small, minnow-like fish were out-competing the rainbows for food as well as predating on their eggs.

In 1999, this problem was addressed when sterile cutthroat trout were introduced into Alta Lake. The slim, muscular cutthroats, with their oversized mouths and vicious teeth, are very effective at devouring various small fish, including the three-pronged stickleback. It was hoped the cutthroats would reduce the number of sticklebacks and give the advantage back to the rainbows. Since the cutts were sterile, they would only live five years and pass without reproducing.

It didn't take long for the cutthroat to prove themselves. Introduced as 6" to 8" fish they quickly doubled in size and by the summer of 2001 were averaging 15" to 19" in length. For the first time in many years, fisherman began appearing on Alta Lake.

Still another theory was the lack of kokanee salmon in Alta Lake. When I arrived in Whistler there were still some spectacular runs of these scarlet spawners. In lakes where rainbow trout are able to grow over two pounds, they forage on kokanee and can grow astonishingly large. It was hoped that habitat improvements might re-established the kokanee and provide rainbows with a valuable protein source.

Some people were concerned the introduced cutthroats might have a negative effect on the remnant kokanee population. The unexpected return of kokanee migrating up from Green Lake last September to spawn in the River of Golden Dreams heightened concerns. There was speculation the kokanee were not native to the Whistler area.

Tom Cole, then president of the Whistler Angling Club, decided to see if there was any record of kokanee being stocked in Alta Lake. He found historical records of all the stocking in Alta Lake. The record showed 10,000-eyed eggs had been planted in the streams leading into Alta lake in 1939 and five more times over the next decade.

This was another piece of the puzzle but even more interesting was the fact the reports showed Kamloops rainbow trout having been stocked in 1923 and then every year from 1926 to 1952.

Was this stocking of rainbows meant to supplement the existing stock? Or was it intended to introduce a new species of fish to Alta Lake? A species we'd all assumed was native? The mystery deepened.

Max Gotz, a local naturalist, once mentioned in a column he wrote for Pique Newsmagazine the native fish of Alta Lake had been cutthroat trout. I faintly remembered reading this but had never considered rainbows weren't native to Alta Lake. The two species of fish are very similar and I assumed that either there had been a misidentification or possibly the cutthroat had been eliminated through angling pressure or habitat degradation. But now I was beginning to wonder if maybe it was rainbows who weren't native to Alta Lake.

The assumption that rainbows have always lived in Alta Lake may have been a historical misconception due to the fact that the Philips' resort was called Rainbow Lodge and those archival pictures of scores of fish were always labelled as rainbow trout. In fact, Rainbow Lodge may well have been named for the rainbows that formed over Rainbow Mountain. "The lodge at the end of the rainbow."

I called Max and he told me he'd read about Alta's native fish being cutthroat in a paper written by Billy Bailiff, a homesteader who came to the area in 1908. Max had visited McTaggart Cowen, one B.C.'s leading biologists, at his home in Victoria. Well into his 80s, Cowen knew of Billy Bailiff and assured Max he was an accomplished naturalist and very unlikely to misidentify a species.

Max had received the Bailiff paper from Florence Petersen of the Whistler Museum and Archives. Florence assured me she would look for the paper but was unsure of its location. The document was to elude me for another five months. In the meantime, there was a new mystery to solve: What had happened to the original cutthroat trout?

I spoke to David Fairhurst whose dad had owed Cypress Lodge on Alta Lake from the mid-1940s through the '50s. David, probably one of Whistler keenest fisherman, knew a lot about the rainbow and kokanee of Alta and Green Lakes. He'd never seen or heard of cutthroats being present.

David had done a thesis on the kokanee of Alta Lake. He discovered their size had diminished when the municipal sewage system was built. Up until then, phosphorous leaching into the lake through septic fields created a food source for the kokanee. He also described how installation of the Hydro lines in the 1970s diverted the flow of Rainbow Creek. It seems the creek most influential to the health of Alta Lake's fish was simply forgotten. Other changes in the flow regime of Alta Lake happened haphazardly over the years.

From all the anecdotal information I received it was becoming clear no one had caught cutthroat trout in Alta Lake as far back as 1940. If cutts were the native fish of Alta Lake, what happened to them? Mysteries within mysteries.

Of all seven Oncorhynchus species - five Pacific salmon, steelhead and cutthroat - native to the northwest, cutthroat trout are the least studied.

British Columbia has two native species of trout: cutthroat and rainbow. The two are similar in appearance, the most distinguishing feature being the cutthroat's red undermandible. The cutthroat's jaw is also longer and they possess a second group of small teeth further back on the tongue, hyoid teeth. Rainbows lack these teeth that allow the cutthroat to take advantage of marginally productive lakes by being able to predate on small fish such as sculpins and sticklebacks.

The rainbow trout is the prince of B.C. gamefish. They're stocked in lakes all over the province. They rise well to dry flies and under the right conditions can grow to great size. Rainbows are acrobats and considered to be a much better fighters than cutthroats.

Roderick Haig-Brown was a B.C. fisherman, conservationist and author who emphasized preserving natural fish stocks and water ecosystems. He expressed grave reservations about introducing hatchery trout into lakes with existing fish populations.

A footnote in his book The Western Angler struck me as being important. "Kamloops and cutthroat trout have been successfully crossed to produce what is known as the Cranbrook trout. A cross of this type can only be maintained and established by selective breeding and I understand the virtues of the Cranbrook trout are not such as to justify the expense of this. The apparent susceptibility of Pacific salmon to furunculosis suggests that any experiments with hybrids should be very cautiously conducted."

Another book in my library, Cutthroat Collections , gave an additional insight. "Cutthroat were the great colonizers of Western North America taking up a stubborn residence in almost every coastal river, creek, pond and lake from Northern California to Alaska. Go back half a century and coastal trout fishing was almost always cutthroat fishing. Cutthroats were the fish too, that penetrated into the Interior. They established themselves as far south as Mexico, north into Alberta and southeastern B.C. and all through the Western United States."

Lower Mainland waters historically teamed with cutthroat before the arrival of Europeans, while B.C.'s Interior was home to the rainbows.

Billy Bailiff's paper finally arrived at my door, courtesy of Max Gotz. This is what the paper had to say about the fish of Alta Lake. "The lakes were all full of cutthroat trout when the white man came and I've seen the lake rippling all over in the evening with the fish feeding on the insects that were dropping from the trees. One pound in weight was a good sized one although I've seen char or Dolly Varden run up to five and six pounds. You could catch all you wanted in a few minutes and I've seen them grab a bare hook. I've seen a man catch fifty in an hour and take them home and smoke them. There was no limit on the number you could take in those days. Kamloops trout were introduced about 1930 with the result they are a little larger but not as numerous. The kokanees were also planted about the same time."

So, if cutthroats were native to Alta Lake and rainbows weren't, what happened?

Over-fishing was probably a factor in the cutthroat's demise. Freshwater fish populations can generally hold their own even when 50 per cent is harvested annually. Although over-fishing, especially taking large numbers of the brood stock spawning in Rainbow Creek, would have made a dent in the number of cutthroat in Alta Lake, it is unlikely they were eliminated simply by over-fishing.

Habitat degradation would have added to the loss. Cutthroat evolved before logging practices created regular flood-drought cycles. Coastal cutthroat are the first salmonoids to die off when human tampering interferes with natural stream flow. While this could be a factor, the worst habitat damage caused by logging the 21 Mile Creek watershed and rerouting Rainbow Creek occurred long after the last cutthroat had been caught in Alta Lake.

Billy Bailiff's paper refers to different diseases and pests that infected the previously healthy forests in the area. Although he makes no mention of pesticides being used to control these pests, an advertisement in 1926 for the Alta Lake Hotel strikes me as being peculiar. "A paradise for fisherman and all lovers of outdoor life. Good saddle horses. No mosquitoes." No mosquitoes? Although only speculation, it seems pesticide spraying may have occurred.

Roderick Haig-Brown was extremely concerned about this practice. "I have yet met a forester who professed to know precisely what he was doing when broadcasting his pet poison over a great area of forest. Generally, he expected to 'control' the specific pest that was bothering him, how thoroughly or for how long, he did not know; what else might be killed, he did not know; what would be the effect of wiping out natural controls, such as birds and other insects, he did not know; how long its evil effects might persist, he did not know. Yet someone had given him permission to go ahead and do the damage."

While these may all have been factors in the disappearance of cutthroats, there is one way to eliminate them without engaging in any of the previously mentioned atrocities.

Growing up in Ontario and spending much of my spare time fishing Lake Huron near Port Elgin gave me some insight into this problem. In the 1970s Americans began stocking large numbers of rainbow trout and Pacific salmon directly into the big lake. These fish had no specific home river to return to. A lot of them made their way across the lake and took up residence near our cottage. The fishing was fantastic. We would often come across large pods of rainbows schooled up where small freshwater streams entered the lake.

There was a tiny stream I would fish on special occasions. What attracted me to it was beautiful little native eastern brook trout inhabiting it. One spring, I came across a dozen 4 to 5-pound rainbows spawning in its waters. In hindsight, I realize it was the beginning of the end of the long surviving, well-adapted brookies. When push comes to shove, the more aggressive rainbows will dominate over equally sized salmonoids. The rainbows never did establish a continuing population in that stream and today, even though its waters are still in an ecologically sound state, only minnow type fish inhabit its waters.

So maybe it all comes down to sex. And let's face it, what's a good story without a little sex?

Rainbow and cutthroat are similar species and both spawn in springtime. The two unlikely co-exist in a natural state. When rainbows were introduced into Alta Lake, they began to mate with cutthroats. The few hybrids that managed to survive were probably quite impressive fish. They likely appeared to be rainbows but may have possessed those crucial hyoid teeth. Unfortunately, they were sterile.

Given all these bits of data and speculation, a likely scenario leading to the present state of fish in Alta Lake might be this. The original species where cutthroats, Dolly Varden char, sculpins and stickleback. Kamloops rainbows were introduced in 1923. This first introduction likely did not produce a lot of offspring and seemingly no negative effects. The continued stocking would have led to a quick decline in the native cutthroat through hybridization.

The Kamloops trout likely provided good sport fishing initially. Billy Bailiff noted that rainbows were slightly larger but not as numerous. He may have been seeing the large sterile hybrids or possibly the rainbows were able to take advantage of the food source once the cutthroat had disappeared. With continued stocking and an abundant amount of ideal spawning areas, rainbow began to thrive in numbers but not necessarily in size.

The biologists, in wanting to keep their project successful, decided to introduce kokanee salmon as a forage fish to fatten up the rainbows. Unfortunately, the rainbows were never able to grow large enough to forage on the kokanee and the two species likely competed with each other for available food.

The last stocking of rainbow occurred in 1952. By this time, the lodges of Alta Lake relied on other activities to keep their operations successful. With an abundance of spawning streams, and only small rainbow trout available, it seemed like a good idea to divert some of the cold freshwater streams from either running or flooding into Alta Lake. Swimming became more popular without the cold water influx.

Although little is known of what happened to the native Dolly Varden, anecdotal information says the Dollies would gather and spawn in 21 Mile Creek at the foot of Rainbow Falls. Diversion and control likely destroyed their spawning ground.

Kokanee were last stocked in 1949. It took a number of years for this species to establish a notable population. Kokanee appeared in large numbers in Scotia Creek as late as 1982. Their disappearance is still a mystery but is likely related to a change in the lake's freshwater flow regime. It is quite possible that the kokanee in Green Lake established themselves from the original Alta Lake stockings.

The stickleback is the fish that prospered throughout all this mayhem. With the disappearance of the native cutthroat, no other species took advantage of stickleback as a food source. To bring things around full circle the introduced sterile cutthroat are taking advantage of the abundant stickleback.

I know little of how the sculpins evolved through the lake's readjustment phase. They were likely one of the original species in the lake, though Andy Petersen recalls Alex Philip told him he brought sculpins into the lake to predate on the too numerous small rainbows. Alex may have seen a decline in the sculpin population from the early days and was attempting to bring them back.

In hindsight there is no one particular reason for the disappearance of the cutthroat from Alta Lake. If young Kamloops rainbows had been introduced when the lake was in a pristine condition it's unlikely they would have been able to colonize amongst such a hostile environment of aggressive cutthroat. But with over-fishing and degradation of the lake's ecosystem though, introducing them probably tipped the balance. This same phenomenon is responsible for the disappearance of cutthroat in most of its historic range. Although Haig-Brown blamed the disappearance of cutthroat from his beloved Campbell River on the hydroelectric project, their demise may well have been the result of Kamloops trout released in Campbell Lake in 1931.

"And the makeup of the runs themselves is still changing," Haig-Brown wrote. "The big cutthroats, it seems, have pretty well disappeared. A few good-sized steelheads, anywhere from five to fifteen pounds, are still running in and their numbers may be increasing. The steelhead grilse, two, three and four pounders, are surely holding their own and probably increasing. And then there are the little grilse, the fish that have been so suddenly abundant this year, fish running from twelve to sixteen or seventeen inches. What they are and why they are, I don't pretend to guess. I miss the great golden cutthroats and still hope that I may one day find a few of them again."

So, does this murder mystery have importance beyond Whistler? Between l905 and 1934 there was an extensive introduction of Atlantic salmon to the West Coast. The Cowichan River on Vancouver Island was the main river used in this experiment. In reality the Atlantic salmon eggs and alvins had little chance of success because the Cowichan River already had an abundance of native salmonoid species and there was no niche for them to gain a foothold.

In the early 1990s, the B.C. government decided to allow Atlantic salmon farming operations in B.C. waters. After all, the earlier experiments had proven the species couldn't colonize native rivers. As a result, 44,000 sizable or mature Atlantics escape from B.C. fish farms annually. Escaped Atlantic salmon have been identified in 77 B.C. rivers.

Steelhead and Atlantic salmon, just like the Kamloops rainbows and cutthroats, are genetically very similar. Although laboratory experiments to produce a steelhead/Atlantic hybrid have been unsuccessful, there is fear in the scientific community the two species do attempt to hybridize with each other. Coupled with the fact steelhead numbers in most streams are already very low, successful hybridization in streams where the two species meet will likely call into question the future survival of the species. If Atlantic salmon do produce viable offspring, it will only displace other wild fish stocks before it too ultimately fails.

This of course, may be the economic boom the province of B.C. needs. With no fish in the rivers, the politicians will no longer need to protect them. Logging, mining, offshore oil drilling and the exportation of freshwater can proceed unabated.

The Whistler Fisheries Stewardship Group is collecting anecdotal information about the fishing history of Alta Lake and the area. Contact Veronica Summerville or Lisa Helmer at:

fish@whistler.ca


Comments