Lake Rooosevelt Net Pen Program A Big Hit

From all over the Northwest, anglers converge on Lake Roosevelt during the spring, summer and fall, some to jig for walleyes but many, perhaps a majority, to hook giant kokanee and rainbows up to 24 inches long.

It’s safe to say that the 150-mile-long reservoir, more than 300 feet deep in some places, is the most popular fishing spot in Washington during the summer months.

Hundreds of anglers who fish Lake Roosevelt are Coast residents, drawn to the lake because it’s the most productive fishing hole east of the Cascades and because of the near-collapse of coastal salmon fishing.

The reservoir first started to attract anglers’ attention after walleyes appeared in large numbers about 40 years ago. For many years, however, only the walleyes were the big attraction. Then came the rainbows and kokanee and a gradual build-up of the smallmouth bass population.

Thanks to a phenomenally successful net pen program, Lake Roosevelt is now one of the top still-water producers of good-sized rainbows in the Northwest. Any knowledgeable angler who has appropriate equipment can hook rainbows from Spring Canyon to Kettle Falls.

When Don Ostlund, Bob Thomas and I started fishing the lake near Keller Ferry a few days ago, we hoped to catch some of the 16- to 24-inch kokanee. Instead, we couldn’t keep rainbows off our hooks.

The trout hit lures near the surface and as deep as 60 feet.

They were a trout fisherman’s dream, big enough to brag about and as tasty as a rainbow ever gets. Instead of being contented with the fish we were catching, we started to think of the rainbows the same way a trout fisherman thinks of a perch.

Every time a fish hit one of the lures, we’d reel it in, hoping it was a kokanee. When we saw the fish, a rainbow, we were exasperated. It was the first time in my memory I resented hooking rainbows.

Each September and October, operators of the net pens receive more than 400,000 2-1/2-inch-long rainbow fingerlings from the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife’s Sherman Creek hatchery and the Bonneville Power Administration-funded Spokane tribal hatchery.

Net pen operators feed the rainbows through the winter and, when they’re about 8 inches long the following May and June, release them into the reservoir, according to Madonna Luers, information specialist for the Spokane regional WDFW office. The fish grow fast. Most are caught when they’re 12 to 14 inches.

Mortality rate from the time the rainbows are put in the pens until they are released is only about 5 percent, much lower than the rate of the fry and fingerlings trucked from hatcheries to lakes.

About 420,000 fingerling rainbows will be delivered to the operators of 28 net pens the next two months, Luers said.

Net pen locations, number of pens at each place and the number of rainbows to be delivered follow: Colville tribal docks at Keller Ferry, four pens, 60,000 rainbows; Friday Bay (Seven Bays area), four, 120,000; Spokane tribal docks at Fort Spokane, four, 30,000; Hunters, four, 60,000; Hall Creek, 60,000, and Kettle Falls, 90,000.

Only four of the eight pens at Friday Bay will receive fish this fall.

Luers said the goal of the Lake Roosevelt Development Association, which coordinates net pen operations, is the releasing of a half million young rainbows into the lake by the spring of 1997.

Anglers who target kokanee know they’re likely, particularly during the summer months, to hook more rainbows than the big landlocked sockeye salmon. The kokanee go deep during the summer months, usually 50 to 100 feet, and they don’t hit anglers’ lures nearly as readily as they do from February through June.

The best rainbow fishing is within a few miles of the net pens. The trout scatter along the entire reservoir, but most tend to stay in the general vicinity of the pens where they were raised.

The most successful anglers are those who have sonars and know how to “read” the screens and those who have downriggers. Sonars help anglers locate fish. When the fish are deep, downriggers can take terminal gear down to the fish.

However, the rainbows can be hooked, especially early and late in the day, by trolling a variety of baited flies and small lures behind leaded line.

At times, the fishing is so good that anglers easily catch five-fish limits. And some of the rainbows are trophy-sized.

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