Plenty of issues on horizon for few ever-fragile fisheries

Inland Northwest sportsmen have plenty to be excited about this fall, and a few issues to ponder for futures seasons.

Nearly 3,000 steelhead a day are swimming over Lower Granite Dam this week, and last week’s spurt of wet weather invited a few of those fish into the Grand Ronde and other tributaries. Elk bulls are bugling in the backcountry. Trout fishing has perked up with the falling water temperatures. Turkey hunters have been finding a bonanza of birds during seasons that opened last weekend.

And young hunters got the first crack at ducks and upland birds during a special youth hunt last weekend, while Idaho shotgunners already have been working their dogs on quail and chukars.

Among all of this activity, it’s easy to lose track of how fragile these resources are.

Wildlife and sportsmen face big challenges from situations such as the sudden decline of kokanee at Lake Coeur d’Alene, the dire situation with kokanee at Lake Pend Oreille, the massive escape of domestic elk into the wilds of southeastern Idaho, the salmon and steelhead migration issues with Snake River dams and the pressure to open more public motorized access into fish and wildlife sanctuaries.

And that’s just the short list.

Lake Coeur d’Alene’s kokanee fishery was closed abruptly this month after Idaho Fish and Game researchers documented a precariously small number of spawners. Background: The 1996-97 floods wiped out a big chunk of CdA’s kokanee. Fewer fish meant bigger sizes that delighted anglers. Fishing pressure picked up and anglers started keying in on 2-year-old fish as well as the 3-year-old spawners.

Meanwhile, chinook also were taking a higher percentage of Coeur d’Alene’s overall kokanee fishery.

“Things can be going fairly well and then nature throws us for a loop,” said Ned Horner, Idaho Fish and Game’s regional fisheries manager. “The larger kokanee produce more eggs than the smaller kokanee, so things were going along pretty well. But when you’re relying on a fewer number of big fish to produce the eggs, you have less buffer if something goes wrong.”

It’s possible that heavy spring rains sent a bunch of kokanee packing down the Spokane River in May and June. Although biologists were uneasy about the large kokanee that were delighting anglers this summer, the drop in numbers wasn’t confirmed until the July trawling surveys.

“By then the damage was done,” Horner said. “We wouldn’t do any good by simply reducing limits. Virtually all of the kokanee spawn on about two miles of shoreline at the north end of the lake. With some of the fish pushing 17 inches, they would be very vulnerable to anglers. We had to close the fishing to be sure we get as much spawning as possible.”

In addition, fish managers will be cutting back the number of chinook salmon they’ll put in to the lake, depending on how much natural chinook reproduction occurs.

Coeur d’Alene is an example of how fast the fishing situation can go from bonanza to precarious.

At Lake Pend Oreille, where the kokanee fishery is on life support, that point has already been made.

A new lake level adjustment plan is the latest in years of effort to revive the kokanee that feed the lake’s famous trophy rainbow fishery. PDO’s level will be held higher longer, then dropped more rapidly than normal this fall, possibly starting next week, in an attempt to leave mackinaw eggs high and dry and reduce the number of those voracious kokanee predators.

Three decades of winter drawdowns behind Albeni Falls Dam reduced kokanee spawning success and contributed to the fishery’s crash. Kokanee numbers this year are so small, they’ll find enough room to spawn this year even with drawdowns. The emphasis is on reducing the predators.

Commercial nets already have been used to haul more than 4,000 lake trout from Idaho’s largest lake. Bounties of $10 are being paid to encourage sportsmen to catch and kill more rainbows. A University of Wisconsin fisheries professor has been hired to help define what additional efforts could help.

“Time is running out” on Lake Pend Oreille kokanee, Horner said. “We’re down to one great year class of kokanee left. We still have too many predators in the lake.”

Selkirks smoking: Hikers headed for the Idaho Selkirks this weekend might see smoke from intentional fires being set to clear vegetation to help boost growth of white bark pines.

The prescribed burning will occur along ridges near Ball Lakes and Big Fisher lakes, Russell Peak, Burton Ridge and Russell Ridge.

Holy floodwaters: Crab Creek and Hawk Creek are two of the four main sites for building dams and reservoirs in Washington’s new Columbia Basin water storage program authorized last year by the legislature. The Department of Ecology made the announcement Wednesday. More to come.