Field reports: Big bass haul at Long Lake Classic
FISHING – Lake Spokane (aka Long Lake) produced some eye-opening stats during a May 2-3 tournament organized by the Spokane Bass Club.
Justin Cox and Ben Schilling weighed in a first-day, five-fish total of 29.05 pounds in the third annual Long Lake Classic. That remarkable one-day take included a 7.68-pound largemouth that won the big-fish award.
The top eight angling teams weighed-in two-day totals of more than 30 pounds with the top four exceeding 35 pounds.
Lecture, tour visit Ice Age Floods
LEARNING – The landscape and academic controversy created by the Ice Age Floods will be explored in a lecture and a bus tour sponsored by the Inland Northwest Land Trust.
A free lecture is set for May 12 by Tony Lewis of the Ice Age Floods Institute at 7 p.m. in Spokane at the Community Building, 35 W. Main Ave.
A bus tour is set for June 7, as Lewis and Ice Age Floods expert Roy Breckenridge guides a group into North Idaho, where the mega-floods started and had their initial impact.
Cost: $45 for Inland Northwest Land Trust members, $75 for non-members, with membership included.
Info: (509) 328-2939, www.inlandnwlandtrust.org.
Anglers cashing in on pikeminnow reward
FISHING – Anglers can help save salmon and get paid to do it by going fishing.
The Northern Pikeminnow Sport-Reward Program kicked off its 2015 season on the Snake and Columbia rivers this week, and anglers already are cashing in on a more lucrative pay-out tier system.
The program pays anglers handsomely to remove pikeminnows that ambush salmon and steelhead smolts near dams. Anglers must report to one of 20 check-in stations along the two rivers from Cathlamet upstream to the Greenbelt at Clarkston.
Anglers in the The Dalles area were the high producers in the first week, catching and turning in 1,924 pikeminnows in the first three days of the season.
Anglers are paid for each northern pikeminnow that they catch that is 9 inches or larger, and the more fish you catch, the higher the reward.
Rewards begin at $5 each for the first 25 northern pikeminnow caught during the season. Anglers earn $6 each for fish No. 26-200, and $8 each for every fish caught above 200. That tier system gets anglers to the higher payoffs sooner. An angler who caught 400 pikeminnows last season would have been paid $1,900. This season 400 fish will net $2,775 – an increase of $875.
Specially tagged northern pikeminnows continue to be worth $500.
The program is funded by the Bonneville Power Administration and administered by the Pacific States Marine Fisheries Commission and is annually in effect on the Columbia and Snake rivers from May 1-Sept. 30.
Peregrine chicks hatch
BIRDING – At least three of the four peregrine falcon chicks have hatched after nesting in a downtown Boise building.
The two parent birds on the 14th floor of the One Capital Center are taking turns keeping the chicks warm. Chicks will fledge in five to six weeks.
A web camera is video-streaming the family show at peregrinefund.org/webcam- peregrine