Roberts Lake on Vancouver Island is just north of Campbell River on the North Island Highway. There used to be a nice little store and restaurant there.
Roberts Lake on Vancouver Island is just north of Campbell River on the North Island Highway. There used to be a nice little store and restaurant there. The last time I was there, I visited a cool museum filled with great exhibits. There were also a number of cabins that you could rent. The museum and restaurant are closed now.
On the road in you will see an overgrown road on the left that is now used as a quad trail. We take the dog there to walk, it’s pretty nice. I never see anyone here. Back as a young man, I used to camp on this road; it was drivable then. One summer, I spent 6 months here.
The lake is deep right at the base of Menzies Mountain. The fishing is awesome. I have pulled quite a few real lunkers from this lake and have seen lots more taken. There are rainbow and cutthroat trout here as well as some nice steelhead that get up into the lake occasionally.
On the south end of the lake, a new day-use site has been built. There are picnic tables at the end of a short well build trail. Past the picnic tables is a fishing dock. This is a good place to wet a line. We used to bottom fish right where this dock is. This is a nice site.
There are several rustic, non-maintained campsites on the lake that you can use. There used to be some private campsites on the backside of the lake where they used to bring city kids. I think there were 3 of them, and they could probably hold 50 to 75 kids each. I don’t know if these summer camps are still in operation.
Across the lake from the store was one; it was at the base of the mountain, and from this site, you could follow an old logging train roadbed that went for miles. I enjoyed this hike, and the wildlife there was incredible. This area has now been logged.
There are quite a few mountain streams that flow into the lake, and bottom fishing where these flow into the lake will give you the best chance of hooking into one of the lunkers from Roberts Lake.
The bluffs up above the lake are great places to harvest wild onions, and the lowlands by the lake are full of chanterelle mushrooms, a fry-up of wild onions, and chanterelle mushrooms as a side dish for fresh trout. Now that sounds good.