Good Planning Doesn’T Guarantee Good Fishing

As any long-time fisheries biologist will admit, “The best- laid plans of mice and men,” as Robert Burns wrote in 1786, “often go astray.”

Managing lakes and streams for big fish is a case in point.

The Fish and Wildlife Department has designated numerous Washington lakes and streams as fly fishing-only or selective-gear lakes during the last few years.

The purpose, of course, is to produce big fish for anglers who are more interested in hooking 14- to 25-inch fish than eating a few 10-inchers.

More often than not, the biologists who carry out the management plans for the special lakes are successful, thanks primarily to excellent conditions for the growth of game fish.

They treat a lake with rotenone, wait until it is no longer toxic, release young, healthy fish into the lake, persuade the Fish and Wildlife Commission to restrict fishing methods and set small or no fish limits and then hope for the best.

They win most of the time, but if you look closely, you’ll see that they keep their fingers crossed.

For years, Bayley Lake on the Little Pend Oreille Wildlife Refuge produced 14- to 24-inch rainbows and 12- to 28-inch brook trout. Fly fishers became accustomed to hooking and releasing up to 20 trout a day, particularly when the chironomids, damselflies, dragonflies and mayflies hatched.

But something happened since the fly fishing-only lake was closed for the season last year. Fishing was poor on opening weekend and it hasn’t improved much since then. Biologist Curt Vail doesn’t know what happened.

He said 500 catchable-size rainbows, the same number as have been stocked the last few years, were released into the lake last year. Few of that age class showed up in the catch this year. The department releases about 500 brook trout into the lake every other year.

Maybe, Vail said, fishing will improve.

Fly fishers have assumed that Amber Lake, managed as a selective-gear lake, is loaded with rainbows, perhaps too many. Fishing was good during the first few days of the season, then something happened. Expert anglers couldn’t catch more than a few.

No one has a good, logical answer as to why the fishing suddenly slowed dramatically. Maybe, a few fly fishers have speculated, there haven’t been large enough bug populations to support a big trout population and the trout starved.

For several years, anglers from throughout the Northwest converged on Lenore Lake, a shallow, seven-mile long lake east of Soap Lake when the big Lahontan cutthroat cruised around the weeds looking for chironomids and other hatching insects. The average size of the Lahontans was about 16 inches. Many were more than 20 inches long.

Then most of the cutthroat in the lake died in the summer of 1998. Columbia Basin regional biologist Joe Foster had the logical answer. The summer was a hot one; the water temperatures soared. Then the oxygen level plunged. The cutthroat died.

Although the department stocked Lenore with 60,000 fingerlings in 1988, most of them probably died. Those that lived should be 14 to 17 inches long now. To rebuild the cutthroat population, the department released 70,000 fingerlings into the lake last year and will release another 70,000 this year.

“We won’t see the kind of fishing people remember until at least 2001 or 2002.” Foster said.

Once upon a time, little Quail Lake on the Columbia National Wildlife Refuge was one of the most popular fly fishing-only lakes in the state. But fishing went downhill when someone released spiny-rayed fish into the lake. The department treated the lake with rotenone in 1998 and stocked it with triploid rainbows.

But the fishing hasn’t been much to write home about. Most fly fishers have ignored the once-popular lake. Foster doesn’t want to speculate on the survival rate of the triploids.

Foster said that shiners are responsible for the slow fishing at Blue Lake, a selective-gear lake south of Loomis. Fishing for big rainbows and brown trout was fantastic in 1998 and last year. The word got around and anglers from throughout the state jammed the lake.

During high water the last couple of years, thousands of shiners entered the lake from a stream that runs through the drainage. Foster said engineers are designing a barrier to stop the shiners from getting into the lake. The barrier won’t cost much, but rehabbing the lake will.

“We’re hoping to get enough money to treat Blue with rotenone,” he said.

So far Dry Falls, Ell, Aenaes and Chopaka are living up to their reputations as the places to fish for big trout. The word’s out that fishing is great and the Northwest’s big fish anglers have been converging on the lakes.

Foster said he fished Chopaka, a fly fishing-only lake, in late May and was pleased with the size and number of rainbows. The fish were 16 to 19 inches long. The smallmouth bass population doesn’t seem to have increased much, he said. Most fly fishers, however, believe the rainbows aren’t as big as they’ve been in past years.

Right now the biggest trout are in Grimes Lake, which was opened to fishing last Thursday. Foster expects anglers to catch numerous Lahontan cutthroat measuring more than 22 inches long. Last year, he said, an angler caught a Lahontan that weighed more than 11 pounds.