Outdoor Briefs

With a good dump of snow reviving the interest in skiing, the pre-registration deadline for the 10-kilometer Spokane Langlauf cross-country citizens race has been extended to Thursday.

Entrants who pre-register pay $12.

A $10 late fee will be assessed after Thursday, said Paul Smith, race coordinator. Forms are available at nordic ski shops.

Kokanee eggs plentiful

For the first time in years, Montana has a bumper crop of kokanee salmon eggs.

State and federal hatcheries collected plenty of eggs this year, and some of the salmon released in Flathead Lake the last two years are surviving.

Kokanee salmon are not native to Flathead Lake but provided a popular fishery as recently as the 1980s until the population essentially vanished.

This year, fishing for kokanee will be legal again.

In past years, managers have had trouble even collecting enough salmon eggs to raise 1 million fish a year, but that isn’t expected to be a problem in 1996, said Mark Deleray, biologist for the Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks.

Biologists collected more than 3 million eggs, far more than in past years, from Lake Mary Ronan. Another 250,000 eggs were collected from the Swan Valley.

That, plus eggs collected from hatchery-reared fish, should give the project a surplus of eggs.

“We haven’t had any die-offs like we have in previous years,” Deleray said.

In the past, the state has borrowed eggs from Colorado, but this year Montana may repay some of them, he said.

State moves against disease

Montana is banning the use of salmonids for cut bait in an effort to stem the spread of whirling disease.

The ban, which went into effect Jan. 1, affects anglers who use parts of trout, salmon and whitefish for bait, as well as sculpins.

Whirling disease is a parasite carried in the bony parts of fish.

Fisheries officials noted suckers, squawfish, peamouth, smelt and perch still are legal for cut bait and can be just as effective.

, DataTimes