Every Fish Lures Supporters

The beauty and value of each fish species is in the eye and mind of the beholder.

To thousands of Washington and Idaho anglers, mackinaw trout are wonderful game fish. They spend countless hours dragging lures around such lakes as Priest and Pend Oreille in Idaho and Loon and Deer in Washington to catch one of the beautifully spotted salmonids.

To even more thousands of fishermen, the mackinaw, also known as lake trout, is little better than a sucker or a carp. Macks, they believe, will decimate the big Yellowstone Lake and Yellowstone River cutthroat populations.

The lowly squawfish has few defenders. To many fishermen, though, it’s money in the bank. Swallowing their distaste for the predaceous fish, they’re catching as many as they can to turn them in at collecting stations along the Snake and Columbia rivers for cash. Many are so good at catching squawfish that they’re making thousands of dollars each spring and summer.

Because the squawfish preys on downstream salmon and steelhead migrants, the Bonneville Power Administration pays $3 for each 11-inch-or-longer for the first 100, $4 for the next 200 and $5 each to each angler who catches more than 400.

Many anglers consider northern pike desirable game fish that deserve enough protection to enhance their populations. At times, more fishermen fish for pike than chinook salmon at Idaho’s Coeur d’Alene Lake. The pike also is popular with many anglers who fish Hayden Lake and the lakes along the lower Coeur d’Alene River drainage.

Just as many fishermen, knowing that pike threaten certain fish species in Hayden Lake and several popular lakes in Montana’s Clearwater drainage, would be happy if biologists came up with a toxicant that would selectively kill all pike.

Pike already are in Washington waters. Some weighing more than 15 pounds have been caught from Spokane (Long) Lake. Biologists wouldn’t be shocked to learn that bucket biologists have released small pike into lakes in the Spokane region.

Walleyes were considered trash fish when they first were discovered in Lake Roosevelt about 1955. Washington fisheries officials encouraged anglers to fill their boats with walleyes; many fishermen did and numbers of walleyes longer than 15 inches plummeted. As the species became popular, the walleye first was declared a game fish and, finally, stringent bag limits were set.

The walleye is so popular now that there are at least a half dozen walleye clubs in the state and some anglers are pocketing thousands of dollars at walleye tournaments each week during the summer months.

Many anglers, particularly trout fishermen, still consider the walleye a trash fish, but they’re resigned to the fact that walleyes are in Washington waters for better or worse.

Numerous Idaho anglers spend a lot of time at Lake Roosevelt fishing for walleyes. Some of them would like to see walleyes in North Idaho lakes and fisheries officials suspect that a few aren’t above sneaking some in their favorite waters.

You’ve probably read a lot of stories about what lake trout may do to the cutthroat population in Yellowstone lake and river. But you may not have heard what Montana fisheries officials think about the introduction of pike into the state’s Clearwater River drainage.

The Clearwater drainage is the principal tributary system of the Blackfoot River, the stream of “The River Ran Through It” fame. Eight lakes in the drainage have provided outstanding fishing for westslope cutthroat, bull trout, kokanee and rainbow trout.

Rod Berg, spokesman for the Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks Department, said bucket biologists released pike into several lakes and that, as a result, fishing is in jeopardy.

Salmon and Inez lakes are full of pike. Seeley, Placid and Alva have growing populations of the predaceous species. Berg said pike are to blame for 82 percent fewer bull trout, 66 percent drop in cutthroat numbers and 60 percent fewer kokanee in Salmon and Inez lakes.

If pike are to be controlled or eradicated, he said, the department will have to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Lake trout began appearing in Yellowstone Lake a year or so ago and biologists are wringing their hands. If nothing is done to curtail the apparently increasing lake trout population, biologists have warned, the cutthroat population in the lake and Yellowstone River will crash.

The cutthroat are one of the basic foods for bears and the target of thousands of anglers who spend tens of thousands of dollars annually. The recreational value of the fish is worth an estimated $36 million a year.

Park officials are considering gill netting the lake trout when they are spawning and encouraging anglers to kill as many as they can catch.

, DataTimes MEMO: You can contact Fenton Roskelley by voice mail at 459-5577, extension 3814.

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