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| April 22 - May 5, 1999 |
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If you love fishing, this is the weekend you've been waiting for – the first chance to catch some of the millions of trout stocked in hundreds of lakes across the state.
Washington's most popular fishing season opens Saturday, April 24, when at least a third of a million men, women, and children will be casting lines and hoping to land a limit -- or maybe just one of the really big ones.
And the trout -- rainbow, cutthroat, brown, brook, and kokanee – come in all sizes. Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife (WDFW) hatchery crews have been busy for the past year planting everything from the tiny fry that grow through the winter, to eight-to-ten-inch yearlings, to surplus broodstock lunkers over two pounds. A total of about 13 million trout have been stocked since last summer. About 2-1/2 million of them went into 350 lakes just in the last two months in preparation for the opener.
If the weather's right, the perfect opening day will be a morning fishing trip followed by an afternoon picnic in the backyard or park with fresh fish on the barbeque. But even if the air is cool or the skies are gray, there's no better time to broil or fry fish than when they're fresh.
But the fish must be handled properly for the best eating. Use a stringer to keep your catch in the water until you're ready to go home, or better yet, keep your catch in a cooler with ice. Letting your catch flop around in the warm sun on shore or in a boat is not just inhumane, it can bruise the flesh and damage the taste of the fish the keep your catch in a cooler with ice.
Clean fish soon after catching for best taste, too. Open the belly, starting from the tail end of the fish, and remove all entrails, including the blood vein near the backbone. Remove the head and either the cook fish whole with the skin on, or fillet from bone and skin.
One of the easiest ways to cook fresh trout is to season them with fresh lemon, ground pepper, and butter, then pop them on the grill over hot coals for just a few minutes or until the flesh flakes or is no longer translucent. Barbequed fillets do best wrapped in foil, which takes the place of the skin on whole fish.
If your mouth is watering now, you need to go fishing on the 24th! Here's where WDFW fish biologists predict some of the best trout catching will be:
- Eastern region: Badger Lake in Spokane County is at its peak with lots of 9-16-inch rainbows and some cutthroats. Fish Lake in Spokane County should be excellent for its plant of 15,500 8-10-inch brook trout and 2,000 ½-to-two pound brook brookstock. Clear Lake in Spokane County will produce both rainbows and browns, including some whopper rainbow broodstock. Fishtrap Lake in Lincoln County will be good catching for 35,000 8-10-inch rainbows and 850 two to four-pound broodstock. Waitts Lake in Stevens County got 200 rainbow lunkers from hatchery broodstock and 25,000 catchable-size rainbows. Sacheen Lake in Pend Oreille County is loaded up with 15,000 brooks and 10,000 rainbows. Ellen Lake in Ferry County should be good for rainbows, at least in that half of the lake that's not still iced over; many high elevation (3,000 feet or more) lakes in the northern third of Ferry, Stevens, and Pend Oreille counties may not be accessible for fishing by the 24th because of ice or snow.
Northcentral region: Blue and Park lakes in Grant County will be hard to beat for fine, fat rainbows in the 11 to 15-inch range and browns of 14-16 inches. Deep Lake in Grant County is fully stocked with last year's rainbow and kokanee fry, plus 5,000 rainbow catchables this month. Dry Falls Lake in Grant County should be as good or better than last year with lots of rainbows from 14 to 20 inches or more, and brown trout up to 24 inches. Jameson Lake in Douglas County should produce some nice 11-inch rainbows. Pearrygin Lake in Okanogan County will be good for 9 -10-inch rainbows.
Southcentral region: Although most lakes in this region are open to fishing year-round due in part to mixed species management, many are stocked with trout during the late April period in anticipation of increased angler activity. Some 120,000 trout have been stocked into regional waters so far this season, most of those this month. Some of the year-round waters to try this weekend include the I-82 ponds in Yakima County, especially Pond 4 (second one east of Donald Road) and Pond 6 (off Buena Loop Road), which each received 7,000 catchable rainbows this spring. Rotary Lake's 15,100 catchable rainbows, plus 50 broodstock, should be good, too, and Clear and Mud lakes have good numbers of 12 to 14 inch rainbows.
Southwest region: This is another region where many lakes are open year-round to fishing, but there are some "hot spots." Battleground Lake in Clark County is always a favorite because it produces well and is heavily stocked with both rainbow and brook trout. Klineline Pond is also well stocked at this time with catchable rainbows and may be less crowded. Cowlitz County's Kress Lake just got 19,000 catchable rainbows plus a couple hundred broodstock, as well as 8,000 browns. Tunnel Lake in Skamania County just received 4,100 catchable-size rainbows, plus 40 whoppers well over 16 inches Northwestern Reservoir on the White Salmon River in both Klickitat and Skamania counties, does open this weekend and it will be good for 10-12-inch rainbows that grew from last year's 20,000-fry plant.
Northwest region: North and Pine lakes in King County should be top producers this weekend. Ki Lake in Snohomish County and Padden Lake in Whatcom County are each set with 18,000 rainbows. Erie and McMurray lakes in Skagit County are best bets for the 14,000 and 16,000 rainbows they received, respectively.
Coastal region: Aberdeen Lake in Grays Harbor County is one of the region's most popular lakes opening this weekend and it just received 7,500 rainbows (including 500 broodstock) and 3,000 cutthroat trout. Syliva Lake, also in Grays Harbor County, is open year-round, but it recently received 450 rainbows over 16 inches. Pacific County's Loomis Lake should be good, with 3,000 catchable rainbows just stocked. McIntosh Lake in Thurston County got 10,000 catchable rainbows and 500 over 16-inch cutthroat trout. Thurston County's Lake St. Clair is open year-round, but this spring received 14,000 catchable rainbows and 500 large cutthroat.
Be sure to have a copy of the fishing regulations. The currently available pamphlet is good through the end of April. A new pamphlet will go into effect May 1 and should be available at WDFW offices and dealerships next week.
This weekend is also notable for Earth Day, (April 22), Arbor Day (April 24), and the end of National Wildlife Week (April 18-24). So if fishing isn't your thing, spend the weekend exploring or enhancing part of the Earth and its wildlife near your home, planting a tree for future nesting birds, or watching wildlife. This year's National Wildlife Week theme is "Keep the Wild Alive: Help Save Endangered Species" and free National Wildlife Federation education kits and color posters, including chinook salmon, gray wolf, and bald eagle, are available at WDFW offices.
The fourth annual Grays Harbor Shorebird Festival, April 30 - May 2, is a bird-watcher's "must do" event. Up to one million Arctic-bound shorebirds, coming from as far south as Argentina, concentrate at the muddy tideflats of the Grays Harbor estuary on Washington's Olympic Peninsula every year at this time. Plovers, yellowlegs, sanderlings, sandpipers, dunlins, and dowitchers, as well as gulls, terns, ducks, geese, hawks, and falcons, are among the stars of this internationally significant natural event. The Grays Harbor Audubon Society sponsors field trips, workshops, lectures, and exhibits during the festival, with all proceeds supporting enhancement of Grays Harbor National Wildlife Refuge at Bowerman Basin on the estuary. A full schedule of activities, and recommended pre-registration, is available by calling Audubon members at 360-753-9497 or 360-495-3101 or 360-533-2619. For just the second year, Grays Harbor Audubon is also sponsoring a bird identification "race" on Sunday, April 25, the weekend before the festival; expert birding teams will compete to see who can locate the greatest number of bird species in 24 hours.
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