Opening Day Not Hot Ticket Few Anglers Hit Lakes; Loon Yields Big Mack
A bitter cold breeze put the chill on the opening of the general trout fishing season at many Eastern Washington lakes Saturday.
Fishtrap Lake bucked the trend, as a few thousand anglers jammed the docks and launches to catch 10 1/2-inch rainbows.
But you could shoot a cannon down many other once-popular lakes and not hit a fisherman.
The temperature was in the 40s in the morning and the wind blew 15 to 25 mph, making many fishermen miserable. But low temperatures, rain and even snow and gale-force winds haven’t kept anglers from fishing during opening days in past years.
When the state’s rehabilitation program hit a peak 20 years ago, you could see 3,000 to 5,000 anglers at West Medical, Silver, Clear, Liberty, Williams, Badger, Diamond and Waitts lakes.
Some anglers found bright spots.
Kokanee at Loon Lake are 12-13-inches long, or 2 inches longer than they were on opening day last year.
Tracy Stephens, a 9-year-old from Spokane, apparently caught the largest trout in Washington on opening day - an 18-pound mackinaw at Loon Lake. He was trolling a Lucky Louie plug.
Loon also produced a 9-pound brown trout for Dave Mitchell of Loon Lake.
Spokane-area angler Monte Hall abandoned the trout lakes for the Snake River, where he caught a 22-pound channel catfish.
The best catch ratios in the state were recorded by state surveyors at Pearrygin Lake in Okanogan County, Cedar northeast of Northport, Wannacut near Oroville, Diamond near Newport, Fishtrap east of Sprague, Wapato west of Chelan, Long in Okanogan County, Dry Falls south of Coulee City and Starvation east of Colville.
Nevertheless, most fishermen know the majority of the region’s trout lakes are infested with unwanted species and the most they could hope for would be five pansized trout.
State Fish and Wildlife Department officials in Olympia seem loath to dedicate more resources to reviving troubled trout waters.
Anglers have been spoiled by the past, when a stringer of 10-14-inchers was common. Now fishermen are staying home.
The Silver Lake parking area at 8 a.m. held only two vehicles. Only one fisherman’s boat was at the north end of the lake. At one time, anglers fished from the road that separates Silver and North Silver and the lake was dotted with a couple of hundred boats.
Silver, home to everything from goldfish to bass, now is open yearround and is stocked annually with only a few thousand trout, many of them brown trout.
Twenty minutes later, no one was on Medical Lake, a selective fishery lake.
At West Medical, usually one of the most popular lakes in the Spokane area, only three anglers were fishing off the dock at the resort.
Fishing was slow at West Medical, but it picked up later in the day, with some anglers catching five-fish limits. The Washington Fish and Wildlife Department planted 40,000 catchable-size trout in the lake before the season and plans to stock 400 large broodstock in the lake in the next few weeks, said area biologist Bob Peck.
Clear Lake, like Silver, also is now a year-round lake that’s planted with a few thousand trout each year. Fishing for big trout, particularly browns, can be good at times, but the catch rates aren’t high enough for opening-day anglers. Clear was quiet on Saturday.
Fishing was slow for flyfishers but fairly good for those who used spinning lures at Amber Lake.
Fishing was fairly good for some fishermen at Williams and Badger lakes. Badger’s trout production is being hurt by bass while Williams, which is downstream from Badger, is being hurt mostly by tench and goldfish, Peck said.
But fishing held up. Williams Lake Resort had permission to stock several thousand large Kamloops rainbows in the lake to boost success. Resort spokesman Brian Chaffee said some of the big Kamloops showed up on the dock during the weekend, as well as cutthroats and rainbows. On the average, anglers caught 2.4 trout apiece at Williams.
Incidentally, 29 of the 31 persons who attended a mid-week hearing on the Fish and Wildlife Department’s proposal to rehabilitate Williams and Badger said they supported treating the lakes with rotenone. The department is making plans to rehab the lakes next fall.
Anglers still want trout, but they’re getting harder to find.
Only nine lakes from the Chelan area to the Idaho border produced averages of better than four fish per angler on opening day.
A few years ago, there were dozens of lakes producing that many.
xxxx Best fishing Following are the Eastern Washington lakes that produced the best fishing on Saturday and Sunday, the opening weekend of the general trout fishing season. Chart shows size range of fish (in inches) and average number of fish per angler, including those caught and intentionally released: Lake Length Ratio Pearrygin 11.2 4.7 Wannacut 11 4.6 Cedar 13-16 4.6 Diamond 10-14 4.6 Fishtrap 10-13 4.4 Wapato 14.5 4.4 Long (Okanogan) 14.5 4.4 Dry Falls 15 4.3 Starvation 10-13 4.3 Rocky 10-15 3.9 Alta 13 3.9 Mudget 11-13 3.7 Jameson 13.5 3.5 Amber 14-16 3.4 Blue 12-13 3.1