Fish Fry stocking in E.WA lakes

[Fish On!]

I was fishing Blue Lake the other day near Coulee City and saw dozens of seagulls going nuts at the WDFW access site/boat launch on the east side of the lake. I could see they were gobbling up something, but didn't know what. I tried to fish there for about 10 mins, but figured with all the seagulls trashing the water I'd go find another spot.

I drove down the lake about 1/2 mi and walked into a side area and fished for about an hour or so. Caught one about 12 inches that was hooked deep that I had to keep. When I was getting ready to go I cleaned the fish and found 9 tiny rainbow fry in it's stomach. It was stuffed! I didn't know WDFW stocked such tiny fish. They were about 1.5-2 inches long. I know they stock fry in most of the lakes over there, but have always seen fish at least 3-4 inches long. Does anyone know is this tiny fry what they normally stock?

As I was leaving I threw out my spinner one more time and caught another small 7 inch fish. That one had a trout fry sticking out of it's mouth! I would guess that the WDFW stocked those fish the day or two before. Some were partially digested and had moved down lake by 1/2 mile.

I'm just wondering about the wisdom of stocking fish of this size if they are going to be eaten so fast by predators. When I saw what the seagulls were feasting on back at the boat launch area I wanted to go back there and save the fishies! Why couldn't the WDFW put out a notice that they are stocking fry and ask for volunteers to scare off the seagulls for a day to let the fry disperse? It would have been easy to sit in a lawn chair with a shotgun loaded with blanks and boom away at the gulls. Better yet give them a couple boxes of shells and shoot the gulls, cormorants too!....:bounce: Or why not stock small quantities around the lake and not dump them all out in one area.

I know that's not going to happen, but something really needs to be done in many of the E.WA lakes that used to have such great fishing. Years ago it was rare to see a seagull, now there are hundreds. Same with cormorants, so I know they are having a direct effect on the fishing. I've spoken with several of the fish biologists about Jameson Lake and they don't seem to understand what's going on there. Same thing with other lakes I bring up. All of the Sun Lakes had awesome fishing years ago. Same with the Seep Lakes near Othello. Dozens of excellent fishing lakes are now hardly worth fishing anymore.

Hey, there's still a few spots I've found with awesome fishing, so all isn't lost. I'll keep hoping for better days.

[gpc]

Yeah I always thought that the fry were about 3 -4" as well. I dont know a whole lot about blue lake, but I doubt there is a naturall reproducing population of trout there, or at least not one thats that succesfull.

But with that lake just getting rehabed last year they might be planting all the tiny fish as a food source for the other fish. Because I know they got a huge number of trips last year and also recieved tiger trout fry at one time or another. Or that could be the lake that got all the "left over" fry. (but I doubt there is such a thing as "left over" fry)

The states trout stocking program had a lot of fund issues this year. So I think what really happened is they just didnt have enough money to get them to the 3 - 4" size before they were realeased. I have been noticing this all accros the state so far this year, on both triploids and regular stockers. They just seemed to be a few inches bigger last year

[Jake Dogfish]

They stock alot of fry in eastern WA lakes because they grow rapidly with more fertile waters and can get to large sizes.
They also make great food for all predators...

[YellowBear]

These are the type's of things that make me question the WDFW.
We can't do anything about the preditors in the water.
We can however get away from the birds.
Why can't they stock fry at night when the birds are not a problem?

[ruthven78]

well for stocking at night you would have to pay people more money to work those hours. Predatation is also why you see them stocking thousands of fry at a time. Not only will some make it through to grow bigger but some will be feed for others allowing them to get bigger as well. You can raise thousands of more fry in the space it takes to raise larger fish. Go visit a hatchery and you can see the big difference in volumes from fry to fingerlings.

In my personal opinion I think seagulls are rats with wings, they eat dang near anything and everything and are a real nuisance . I wouldnt mind it at all if they made culled the seagull population.

[Marc Martyn]

If the sea gull population was dramatically reduced, who would clean up the half eaten hot dogs and spilled popcorn in the Walmart parking lots?:cheers:

[Fish On!]

That would be taken care of by the over abundance of crows!.....LOL The black devils kill everything in sight around my area. I used to have dozens of song birds and hardly a one now.

I can see that budgets are tight, but darn I'd like to see what fish we have stocked have some what of a chance to survive. You can bet there's some brainiac in a suit some where that can put a dollar value on fishing and recreation in our state. You can bet it amounts to billions of dollars each year. They've cut off the funding for the triploid program even though that's been the biggest boost to fishing in our state in many years. Anyone that's fished Rufus Woods and seen the money that's being poured into that area can attest to that. Well duh!.....

I see campgrounds being closed in the Wenatchee-Okanogan NF to save $144,000 but then the state oks 1.5 million to add decorative lights to the Tacohma narrows bridge. Makes you go hmmmmmmm.

[YellowBear]

I understand that many of the fish stocked become food for other fish and that is unavoidable, but if we can avoid some of the predation on our fry, we should at least give it a try.
If some guy has to work a few nights out of the year, so be it.
If your boss comes to you and tells you that he needs you to work nights for awhile, are you going to tell him No?

Fish On,
I had not heard about the Triploids program being dropped.
Have you heard why?

[Fish On!]

The triploid program isn't being dropped, just cut back. I tried to find what was in the e-mail, but can't locate it. I believe some/all of the state funding was cut off? I know WDFW cut back on the numbers of triploids stocked this year by about 25,000 over previous years. I'll do some more digging around and see if I can't get a better answer.

Couple guys at the net pens on Rufus said 3 of the pens were released because they lost funding and couldn't afford to feed the fish. I don't know if that was state money or what, so be nice to know. If it is state money then I want to scream about that!....

[ruthven78]

If the sea gull population was dramatically reduced, who would clean up the half eaten hot dogs and spilled popcorn in the Walmart parking lots?:cheers:

lol ya got a point there

the finches will get the popcorn but I think we would be lost in a deluge of half eaten hotdogs

[ruthven78]

I understand that many of the fish stocked become food for other fish and that is unavoidable, but if we can avoid some of the predation on our fry, we should at least give it a try.
If some guy has to work a few nights out of the year, so be it.
If your boss comes to you and tells you that he needs you to work nights for awhile, are you going to tell him No?

Fish On,
I had not heard about the Triploids program being dropped.
Have you heard why?

Its really easy to say "If some guy has to work a few nights out of the year, so be it.".......but uhh its getting the guys to do it and having to pay them at higher wages.

You cant be a boss (in government) and just walk up to an employee and say "guess what? You're going to be working some night shifts." There is more to this situation than the simple discussions going on....lik the fact that state workers have a union and changes to shifts like this would need to be done with the union in agreement. It would also require more than 1 person to work this later shift, you would need people at the hatchery in addition to those who would drive the truck to the release site. The late shift would have to be made in addition to those who already work during the day.

So when you compare the costs associated with having people who late shifts versus the loss of fry to predation its pretty easy to say...let the seagulls have their occasional buffet.

[produce2troutcat]

Maybe they should station someone for a few days during the daylight and let them shoot the noisemakers at the birds like they do at airports.After a couple of days the fry would be scattered about .Heck,they could probably sell raffle tickets and the winners would get to do this.Our farmers get to do this for their crops ,the fry are like a crop, so why not?

[David Hert]

The triploid program isn't being dropped, just cut back. I tried to find what was in the e-mail, but can't locate it. I believe some/all of the state funding was cut off? I know WDFW cut back on the numbers of triploids stocked this year by about 25,000 over previous years. I'll do some more digging around and see if I can't get a better answer.

Couple guys at the net pens on Rufus said 3 of the pens were released because they lost funding and couldn't afford to feed the fish. I don't know if that was state money or what, so be nice to know. If it is state money then I want to scream about that!....

25,000. Thats alomost the amount that they release just in Clear Lake alone. If they cut back on just 100 triploids they released on each lake in E. Washington alone, 25,000 is alomst next to nothing. Let's all look at the bigger picture! It's not just us average Joe's feeling the econimc pressures, the State Government has to be feeling it as well, along with Counties and Cities feeling it as well. It all hurts. but at least us in the Northwest always get hit last (and the least) versus the rest of the Country!
I just got back from a trip to New Jersey. (My brother-in-laws wedding). You wanna talk about expensive? Like Einstein said, "Everything is Relative". So "Relatively" speeking, we have it pretty easy!!!

[David Hert]

Sorry, it wasn't Triploids, it was regular rainbows in the 8" to 14" size and the exact number according to WDFW is 25,700 regular Bow's. Like I said before, thats only 1 Lake, and yet in Yakima County no less!

[Jake Dogfish]

If you look at a lake by lake basis in the spring stocking schedule you can see the drop in the Triploids.
Some of the plants stayed the same, a couple might of went up, but most went down.