Family has history at favorite fisheries

Maxine Bayley Matney says that during her childhood in northeastern Washington, she went just about everywhere with her father.

That means she was rarely far from fish.

J.W. Bayley and his family lived in Stevens County on Bayley Lake, where they raised deer in a pen and rainbow and brook trout in the lake.

“My mom was a trapper and a crack shot with a rifle,” said Bayley Matney, who’s 75 and spending winters in California. “My job was to pick dead fish eggs out of the trays.

“I know some of the trout went to the Davenport Hotel, and I’ve heard the rest were packed in ice and sent as far as San Francisco.”

While the cash harvest was done with nets, J.W. and friends couldn’t help but cast flies occasionally to enjoy the lake as fishermen, she said. The lake continues to be a fairly popular fly-fishing-only lake that’s open to the public.

The family was forced off their namesake lake in the late 1930s when the Little Pend Oreille Game Preserve was established to protect white-tailed deer. They moved to North Twin Lake on the Colville Indian Reservation, where they opened a small fishing resort.

“I was in the fifth grade when we moved there (in 1942) and we sold the resort when I was a senior in high school,” she said.

“The fishing at North Twin at that time was very good for brook trout and rainbows. Most people trolled at first, but then still-fishing became popular. We were booked solid all summer long, even during the war. People would make reservations by mail a year in advance.

“At first we didn’t even have electricity, but we never had telephone.”