Fishing news briefs
Fishing for dollars
The 2008 Pikeminnow Sport Reward Season, which pays anglers a bounty of up to $8 a fish, will run May 5-Sept. 28 on the Columbia from the mouth to the Tri-Cities and up the Snake to Lewiston.
The Bonneville Power Administration funds the reward program to reduce the number of the native predators, which have been given an unnatural advantage for eating endangered salmon and steelhead smolts as they try to migrate downstream through the reservoirs created by dams on the two rivers.
A few anglers have earned more than $40,000 a season.
Boyer Park on the Snake River was the tops among the 17 check stations for collecting pikeminnows from anglers last year.
Details: (800) 858-9015 or www.pikeminnow.org.
Baitless at Coffeepot
Perch anglers shouldn’t be turned off by the no-bait selective fishery rules at Coffeepot Lake.
“A person can catch all the perch he wants to clean or fillet with a bright red Bionic Worm fly-fished under a small bobber (strike indicator to fly fisherman) at Coffeepot,” said Jerry McBride, a veteran lake fisherman and member of the Inland Empire Fly Fishing Club.
The Bionic Worm pattern basically is a red wrap on a hook with a poof of pink marabou at one end and a bead head.
It’s available in any fly shop.
“It takes a bit of practice to keep them on the barbless hook, but once you master this you can catch a perch on just about every cast,” he said.
“Every once in awhile, instead of a perch, it will be a big rainbow which adds a bit of excitement to the fishing.”
Introduce a kid to fishing
The Spokane area’s annual CAST for Kids event will be May 3 at Clear Lake.
For a $5 fee, youths 5-14 will take home a rod and reel, a Fishing Kids T-shirt and have the opportunity to catch planted rainbow trout under supervision of local volunteers.
Members of area sportsmen’s groups donate many hours to rig fishing rods and gear before the event, and the even clean the fish for the kids before they leave.
CAST for Kids is limited to the first 1,000 sign-ups.
Preregister: Spokane County 4-H, (509) 477-2638.
Feast on brookies
Big Tiffany Lake northeast of Winthrop will be a prime spot to harvest Eastern brook trout this year.
A bonus limit of 10 brookies with no minimum size limit is being added to the daily limit of five trout this year.
All cutthroat trout must be released.
The lake is a major spawning and rearing area for brook trout, which then feed into the Boulder Creek watershed. The Washington Fish and Wildlife Department is trying to re-establish westslope cutthroat in Big Tiffany while brook trout impacts on endangered bull trout downstream.
Bring hiking shoes and a daypack. The area has some excellent hiking trails.