War On Squawfish Sagle Man Emerges As ‘The Terminator’ Of Lake Pend Oreille’s Lowly Squawfish

Lloyd Campbell is considered the king of Lake Pend Oreille’s squawfishermen, although he admits the title has gone virtually unchallenged.

“What I need is a little more competition to make this more fun,” he said.

Campbell, a 54-year-old disabled machinist from Sagle, has won a bit of fame and fortune from his lonesome niche. But the prime motivation is more basic.

“I hate squawfish,” he said.

In four days of fishing, Campbell recently caught 185 pounds of squawfish to win a $250 prize in the Lake Pend Oreille Idaho Club’s spring K&K fishing derby. He’s won the squawfish category every year since it was introduced to the derby four years ago.

Once the derby is over, however, Campbell’s interest doesn’t wane.

“Look out there,” he said heading out of Bottle Bay on a sunny morning last week. “During the K&K derby, there were boats everywhere. Today you can’t see another boat on the water.

“Unless you have a prize for an incentive, there aren’t many people willing to spend a few hundred hours of trolling to catch a rainbow. I couldn’t do it. I need lots of action. I usually get it when I fish for squawfish.”

Actually, that’s only part of the reason he pursues the black sheep of the fishery.

“I have a vendetta against them,” he said. “It’s disgusting to think how many rainbows and kokanee they eat in a year.”

Squawfish are not listed as gamefish in Idaho. No daily catch limit has been set. Campbell has caught up to 250 pounds of squawfish in a single day, and up to 2,200 pounds in a year.

“They average 3 or 4 pounds,” he said, “But I caught one that weighed 10 pounds 14 ounces.”

Disdained fish such as carp and tench have found their way onto the Idaho Fish and Game Department’s list of state record fish, but not the lowly squawfish.

“That’s because nobody had ever bothered to enter one,” said Bill Horton, Fish and Game resident fisheries coordinator in Boise. “We just had our first squawfish registered for the record books a couple of weeks ago. It’s a 1-pound, 6-ounce fish caught by an 8-year-old girl from Boise.”

Campbell caught a half dozen squawfish larger than that in a few hours of trolling at Lake Pend Oreille last week.

“Squawfish are thick in every bay in this lake,” he said.

He offered a sample of deep-fat fried squawfish and said, “Delicious isn’t it? But squawfish have Y bones and there’s a trick to filleting them. Otherwise more people would eat them,” he said.

But what does he do with thousands of pounds of squawfish?

“I eat some,” he said. “Wish I could find someone who’d grind it into cat food. Most go into the Dumpster. I’m sure people don’t like that, but you can use only so many squawfish to fertilize your garden before the neighbors start complaining.”

Such vengeance against squawfish is lost on some anglers, including Lance Nelson, Fish and Game biologist from Coeur d’Alene.

“The squawfish, along with the westslope cutthroat, bull trout and pygmy whitefish, are among the few truly native fish species to the North Idaho region,” he said. “We’ve diluted native fish stocks with everything from yellow perch and bass to recent introductions of northern pike. Even rainbows are non-native to this area.

“So I view it as an affront to native fish to needlessly slaughter squawfish. In the long run, it won’t do any good, and it could do some harm to other fisheries.”

Exterminating predators to boost prey species is a complicated endeavor, regardless of whether it’s on land or in the water, Nelson said.

“The species can respond to the decline in the population by eventually becoming more prolific,” Nelson said. “We see this in coyotes, and it could be the same in squawfish.”

Such reasoning is lost on Campbell, who took aim at squawfish about eight years ago when he felt something had to be done to stem the decline of rainbows, bull trout and kokanee.

As he trolled out of Bottle Bay, Campbell pointed to a weathered diving plank he and a buddy had propped on a rocky point 40 years ago.

“I used to commercial handline for kokanee here when the limit was 300 a day,” he said. “Now the kokanee are getting scarce and the Dolly Varden - they call them bull trout, now - are almost gone.”

Campbell said he can’t do much about Cabinet Gorge Dam or the forest roads that have damaged fish spawning grounds.

So he targets squawfish, trolling Rapala lures 100 feet behind his boat, which might generously be called low-tech.

The 14-foot open aluminum craft is powered by a 6-horse outboard. The boat has no top to shed rain, no electric motor for silent maneuvering, no electronic fishfinding devices or downrigger. The basic equipment had been paired down to a set of oars, a tackle box , several rods - and a coffee can.

“I don’t go in for nothing when the fishing’s good,” he said. “It’s just my little bitty boat,” said Campbell, who’s anything but little himself.

The boat lists violently each time he leans to the side to land a squawfish.

“A little scary, isn’t it,” he said, rocking the boat as he lunged for his rod to reel in another victim.

Whack!

“I love thumping them,” he said.

He trolls as fast as he can and still maintain the proper action on the plugs.

“People look at me from shore and wonder what the hell I’m doing,” he said. “I nearly leave a wake.”

He also likes to anchor and cast.

“They attack a lure,” he said. “I was casting a Rattle Rap last year and hooked two 3-pounders in one cast. One was going one direction and one was going the other direction. I had a hell of a battle on my hands.”

Campbell hooked another squawfish on the troll and rocked the boat violently reaching for the rod.

“It’s just a baby; I’ll surf this one in,” he said, cranking the reel so fast the fish planed on the surface.

Whack.

“They don’t have much fight when you catch them trolling. But they hit hard when you’re casting.

Minutes later, Campbell’s rod and that of his guest jerked to the tug of squawfish.

“Hey, there’s a double,” he said.

Whack! Whack!.

“You don’t need any fertilizer, do you?”