Bens Lake Fishing Guide, Halifax Regional Municipality, Nova Scotia

• Overview

  You will find Bens Lake in Halifax Regional Municipality, Nova Scotia. The shore lies 19 km out. It covers about 4 hectares, so this is small water you can walk round in under an hour. Enfield lies 13 km from the water. The big place round here is Dartmouth, 23 km distant. It lies deep inside the county rather than near an edge.

• Where to Fish on Bens Lake

  There is no published depth for this one, so start shallow and work out. A soft bed grows weed late into autumn, which keeps fish shallow. Weed, then depth: that is the order to fish a water of this kind. Public occurrence data for Halifax Regional Municipality names brook trout, alewife, rainbow smelt and American eel. At least one recorded species is protected in parts of its range; read the local rules before targeting anything. On Bens Lake the quiet end is the one worth the extra effort.

• Seasonal Patterns

  The seasonal spread runs -6°C to 18°C. A hard winter is normal, and the thaw brings a strong few weeks. Winter fishing happens on the ice here, with open water back around mid April. The open-water window runs from around mid April to about mid December in an average year. The weeks after the thaw and the ones before the freeze are the strongest. That is the shape of the year on Bens Lake.

• Tackle & Baits

  Access status is simply unknown for this water. We find no slipway, car park or made path within a short radius, so treat access as rough. Trout here take small spinners, spoons and, where fly water allows, a nymph or dry. Take the rules with you rather than trusting memory. Where parking is tight, arriving early solves most problems. Little Lake No Good, 0.7 km away, makes the obvious fallback. None of that is settled for Bens Lake in what we hold.