Head north to beat crowds

Trout waters in the northeastern corner of Washington will hold pleasant surprises for anglers when the trout season opens on April 30, plus a few unpleasant ones.

Top lakes for the spring fishing in the timber country north of Spokane include Cedar, Starvation and Waitts in Stevens County; Marshall and Yocum in Pend Oreille County, and Curlew in Ferry County.

Disappointments are likely to include Gillette, Heritage, Leo, Sherry and Thomas lakes in the Little Pend Oreille chain east of Colville as well as McDowell Lake east of Chewelah.

“The Little Pend Oreille chain has been overtaken again by sunfish, perch and bass and the cutthroat just haven’t done well in there,” said Curt Vail, Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife fisheries biologist.

“We’re going to change the management this year and we won’t be stocking this spring with yearling trout. Instead, we’ll stock in the fall with larger rainbow fry, hoping they will show better survival. And we’ll also stock tiger trout in there, which will feed on the sunfish and could do well.”

So trout anglers heading to the LPO chain this summer will be fishing primarily for carryover cutthroats from previous years. The next chance for a decent fishery there is 2007.

But numerous other waters keep anglers happy into the summer, he said.

Starvation Lake is a perennial favorite and a rainbow limit-producer in the first weeks of the season. Like most northeastern lakes, it doesn’t get too crowded, but a bottleneck can occur at the small one-lane boat ramp.

Cedar is excellent for spring rainbows and Yocum is a prime cutthroat lake.

“Waitts has really been shining in the last few years,” Vail said. “They have two rainbow net pens up there. In addition, we’re planting another 20,000 or more catchable rainbows and we put in 40,000 German browns in the fall.

“The fish are looking great, running 10-11 inches in spring and up to 16 inches in summer. The browns have lots of forage in Waitts, with all the sunfish and small perch.”

Meadow Lake is another good rainbow producer, but it’s at a slightly higher elevation and doesn’t come on as early as other area lakes.

Jumpoff Joe Lake has a smorgasbord of fish, including German brown trout, rainbows, a few brook trout, plus perch and bass.

Rocky and Ellen lakes have a new lease on life after being rehabilitated last year. They’ve been restocked with catchable-size rainbows and some lunker brood stock. “They’ll be okay this year and much better next year,” Vail said.

All the rainbows stocked in the northeastern corner of the state are sterile triploids from the Spokane hatchery, Vail said. But cutthroats are still stocked in a few lakes, including Marshall, a bastion for the species since the 1950s.

Other cutthroat lakes include Browns, Mystic, Noname, Muskegon, Pettit and Yocum, all in Pend Oreille county.

Brown’s, a fly-fishing-only lake, is suffering from the illegal introduction of burbot. “We’re going to try to trap them out of there,” Vail said. “Burbot can devastate a cutthroat fishery.”

McDowell, a selective fishery, is infested with Eurasian milfoil, which robs oxygen from the fish and makes it difficult to catch the surviving fish in portions of the lake.

Bayley Lake, a fly-fishing-only lake on the Little Pend Oreille Wildlife Refuge, continues to be at below-normal water levels. Bayley and Potters Pond will be stocked with about 500 wild redband rainbows.