Anglers Upset As Fish Slip Over Spillway Funds Weren’t Provided To Build Fish Screen Around Hayden Lake Spillway

Fisherman Jerry Moss watched with dismay last spring as hundreds of large trout washed over the temporary spillway on the Hayden Lake dike.

Now, Moss watches with dismay as the county builds a permanent spillway in the dike with no fish screen.

“Last year we were told there’s supposed to be money set aside for a fish trap, now I find out there’s no means to do it,” Moss said Friday.

County Commissioner Dick Panabaker said he sympathizes, but there’s nothing the county can do.

The only reason the county can build the spillway is because without it, floodwaters could breach the dike and possibly rupture gas and sewer lines running through it.

“We perceived it as a health hazard,” Panabaker said. “It’s an emergency thing.”

Without the health and safety issue, “we have no jurisdiction here,” he said. The property is in dispute, with both the state and Idaho Forest Industries claiming ownership.

Last year, the county built a temporary spillway when a record snowpack started to melt and threatened to overwhelm the dirt dike.

Anglers flocked downstream of the dike to salvage the fish spilling over it into a field on the other side. The Idaho Department of Fish and Game relaxed its normal fishing regulations to allow fishermen to keep the spilled fish, even undersized ones.

Moss, a Dalton Gardens resident who has fished at Hayden Lake for 30 years, visited the dike nearly every day, he said.

“I personally saw 400 or 500 fish come through the little spillway,” he said, referring to a narrow spillway that’s been in the dike for years. That culvert-like opening was not large enough to handle the floodwaters, prompting the county to build the 50-foot-wide temporary spillway.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency has approved a $40,000 federal and state grant to help with construction costs for the permanent spillway. The entire job will cost about $50,000, said Panabaker.

But that’s not enough for a fish screen.

The Department of Fish and Game estimates that a fish screen to handle the kind of runoff the lake had last year would cost half a million dollars, said Ned Horner, fisheries biologist.

“Ideally, we don’t like to lose any fish,” Horner said. “But we don’t have half a million to build a fish screen.”

Moss believes that cost estimate is too high.

“What’s wrong with putting up some netting until something more permanent could be done?” he asked. “I know 25 or 30 guys who would go out and pound in some posts to do something about it.”

Wild trout usually are spawning in Hayden Lake’s tributaries during spring runoff.

The fish that typically are lost are hatchery trout stocked by Fish and Game. The agency stocks the lake with 100,000 cutthroat trout and 270,000 rainbow trout each year. Anglers are allowed to keep fish longer than 14 inches.

To reduce the loss of hatchery fish, the agency now is stocking the lake on the northern end, instead of near the spillway on the southern end. The hatchery fish now have to avoid predator fish on the north end, but not as many are crowding around the dike.

Horner concedes the trout population was hurt by the high waters, but it’s a problem that occurs on other lakes, including Spirit and Twin lakes, he said.

Heavy spring runoff in 1997 is believed to be the reason for huge declines in the kokanee population on Lake Pend Oreille. The lake had about 40 percent fewer kokanee in the fall of 1997 than during 1996, according to the Department of Fish and Game.

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