Posted: Jul 14, 2004  11:18

Vol. 3-7-04

“The gods do not deduct from man’s allotted span the hours spent fishing.”
-Babylonian Proverb-

“Nor the time spent thinking or reading about it either.”
-Uncle Bud-

By Uncle Bud

This month featured subject is volunteers and volunteering … our salute to those fine people who step up and offer their help in the maintenance and enhancement of our fisheries here in the Panhandle.

First off though is a heads up for sportsman who like to get off the beaten path and fish places like Solomon.

Marginal lake level warrants watching.

Solomon’s water level is marginal at best, but our hatchery guys stocked it just recently with an estimated 1,000 nice fat Rainbows. The water level has been stable for almost a year now, but I would encourage you to fish it just in case we get into another of the Solomon is dropping out of sight again cycles of years gone by.

John Rankin stocking cut’s in Cutoff Lake (Lake Mountain).

It is mountain lake stocking again this year, which leads us into our feature … volunteers, and their important role in getting our high elevation lakes stocked.

Here is volunteer Jarrett LeClaire who backpacked a 1,000 Cutthroat fry into this remote lake with hatchery manager John Rankin. There is no designated trail, improved or otherwise into Cutoff Lake. Just an estimated five miles of hard climbing and detours around rock out croppings.

Volunteer LeClaire with transport bladder.

This year the volunteer roster to stock mountain lakes totals a healthy 51. Most noteworthy in this count is that 31 are students from three private boarding schools … Echo Institute, Northwest Academy, and Turning Winds Academic Institute.

We tagged along the other morning when six students and their advisor Scott Bertsul from Turning Winds came to the Sandpoint Hatchery to be briefed and receive their load of fish destined for Spruce Lake.

Rapt attention as the briefing begins.

It's our pleasure to introduce these young folks to you … Nathan B. – South Dakota, Jennifer H. – Idaho, George T. – Oregon, Patrick Eugene L. – Illinois, Vanessa M. – California, and Jessica H. -Iowa.

Here they are listening to Zach Olson as he briefs them on the procedures they will be going through, and the preparation necessary before they can begin their trek to Spruce Lake.

After their initial overview briefing in the tool room, Zach took the students into the indoor fish run area to watch as he dipped out an estimated 1,500 rainbow fry for the Spruce Lake stocking.

Zach loading fry into transport bladder.

Zach’s briefing was a challenge for these fine youngsters because he kept drilling them on how to equate the number of fish via weight per volume of water so they would know the safe levels of fish per transport bladder. (I even saw one young guy fishing for his pocket calculator in his attempt to keep up with Zach’s millimeters, grams, and millilitres.

Once the transport bladder was filled, Zach moved his attentive group back to the tool room to fill the bladders with air. The bladder was then placed on ice in a chest for the ride north. At this point, Zach briefed the students on the potential for shock for the fry and explained the temperature variance rule of plus or minus 10 degrees when stocking fish.

He pointed out that once they reach Spruce Lake they could simply lay the bladder in the water until the water in the bladder became “climatized” with the water in the lake. Zach further warned the students “just going to the lake and dumping the fry in the water could traumatize the delicate fry to a point where they would not survive”.

Final preparation of transport bladder … air.

Briefing ended, the students were provided with a backpack for the 1/4 mile hike into Spruce and sent on their way.

I had the pleasure of shaking their hands and thanking them for their collective help. I hope they will remember their stocking trip and become young ambassadors of our fisheries when they return to their homes.

BASS! True to record, his annual email hit to remind me that we do have people who fish for bass … Gary H. from Priest River got on my case again this year.

Well Gary, all I can say is that since us bass fishermen (I am a bassmaster) are in the minority in the Panhandle, it behooves us to keep a low profile. In fact, after a guy from Georgia by the name of Cal O. showed up, I think our small mouth population in L.P.O. is in trouble.

O.K. let’s hear it from the catfish people now.

Back to the mountain lake stocking … we are almost out of the rainbow-stocking window, as it should be completed within this week. We’ll be going into the cutthroat stocking cycle around mid-August when the eggs hatch out. Here are the lakes on this years’ stocking list:

Ball Creek-Beehive-Big Fisher-Caribou-Copper-Crystal-Debt-Dennick-Gold-Harrison-Hidden-Hunt-Hunt Peak #1- Lake Mountain (Cufoff)-Little Harrison-McCormick(Hunt Peak #2)-Mollies-Myrtle-Pyramid-Queen-Roman Nose #3-Sand-Snow-Spruce-Standard-Trout-Two Mouth #2-Two Mouth #3- and West Fork.

A heads up for the Lake Pend Oreille folks … F&G will be holding another public hearing on the management of your fisheries sometime in August. Time and place will be announced shortly. Wanted to give you an advance on this public forum so you could get your big guns and thinking caps on as you already are acutely aware that this is a very complex issue. As such, our fisheries managers seek more feedback on just where you think they should go with the current management plan.

The halt in netting for sampling is just a break to assess what we have to date in data, and to improve or revise the management plan for your beloved L.P.O. and to keep it in line with the majority of sportsman who fish the lake. We’ll do a press release posting the minute we get the word on when and where this important public meeting will take place.

It is crayfish time! Go get these succulent little creatures.

Hot weather equals top water action for everyone. (Except you catfish types.)

Tight lines to all!