High Water Makes Good Fishing, Viewing

As they travel to the region’s fishing spots to cure bouts of cabin fever, more and more anglers are discovering what farmers have known for some time. The landscape is soggy and lakes, potholes and creeks are full of water.

For example, Fourth of July Lake south of Sprague is the highest it has been in several years, many seep lakes in the Columbia Basin are so full that anglers hardly recognize them and once-dry creeks are so turbulent and muddy that they can’t be waded.

Most anglers know that Negro Creek flooded the town of Sprague, but few realize that many lakes they’ll fish this spring are at record or near-record highs.

The high water not only is great for fish. It’s wonderful for nesting waterfowl and other wildlife. The ground is so saturated with water that sagebrush, dried out by years of drought, may be purple and fragrant again.

For the first time in at least a half-dozen years, I was able to launch my 14-foot boat last week at Fourth of July Lake. As anglers who fish the lake each winter season know, the lake has been at least six feet below normal levels. It’s been virtually impossible to launch a boat from a trailer for a long time.

The lake’s level is not quite back to normal, but it’s about four feet higher than it was last fall. That’s good for the fish. My friend and I fished the lower end for several hours. We fished our favorite spots, but we could have gone down another half mile. The lake has expanded into an area that has been dry for a half-dozen years.

The lake not only was high, it was cold. My sonar showed 41 degrees until late afternoon, when the temperature rose one degree. That is a little too cold for insects to hatch in large numbers. We saw some tiny midges, but the rainbows weren’t interested in what we and other fly fishers showed them.

A day before I fished Fourth of July, another friend and I decided to fish a lake we hadn’t fished for several years. A fisheries biologist had told fly fishers to fish the lake soon after the ice had melted. He got our attention when he said there were good numbers of rainbows more than 16 inches long in the lake.

My friend had tried to find the lake a couple of days before we drove the 120 miles. When he walked south from a parking area, his float tube on his back, he saw water nearly everywhere he looked. The landscape had changed so much as the result of high water that he wasn’t certain where the lake was located. He turned around, hiked back to his car and drove to another lake.

When we arrived at the parking lot, we put on chest waders and backpacked our float tubes to the area where he had turned around. But we continued hiking. Gradually, some landmarks became familiar. The lake had spilled out into surrounding land, creating recognition problems.

Later, we decided to fish Lenice and Merry lakes in the lower Crab Creek channel. As we drove along the dirt road that parallels the creek, we were impressed by the volume of muddy water surging through a side channel of Crab Creek. We had never seen flowing water in the channel.

By 1 p.m., we were back-packing our float tubes to the selective fishery lakes. The sagebrush-covered hillside over which we hiked usually is bone-dry.

My friend chose Merry to fish; I decided to fish Lenice, the most popular in the chain of four lakes. At least 20 RVs, pickups and passenger cars were parked at the main access point; therefore, I knew most anglers, primarily fly fishers, would be fishing Lenice.

I knew Lenice was big enough to accommodate more than 50 anglers without them feeling crowded. Lenice wasn’t much higher than it has been the last few years. I had expected that, knowing that the main channel of Crab Creek was flowing through Lenice and the rest of the chain.

The water of Lenice and Merry was a little warmer than Fourth of July’s, and tiny midges hatched sporadically. However, most fly fishers who fished Lenice had problems getting strikes. I hooked a few 16- to 19-inch rainbows, mostly on scuds.

My friend, however, hooked and released 15 to 20, mostly on red chironomid larvae patterns.

The surplus water has made the region’s waterfalls more spectacular than they’ve been in years. Amateur and even professional photographers have been photographing the Hog Canyon, Hawk Creek and Palouse River waterfalls.

The waterfall at the mouth of Hawk Creek isn’t quite as spectacular as that at Hog Canyon, but it’s worth photographing. The most photogenic of all is the Palouse River waterfall.

, DataTimes MEMO: You can contact Fenton Roskelley by voice mail at 459-5577, extension 3814.

The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = Fenton Roskelley The Spokesman-Review