We spent 3 days camping, fishing and panning for gold in the mountains around Pierre Lake this week. Our fishing rods saw a lot more action than the gold pans. We did find a little gold in one creek. Very little. Bring your magnifying glass by the house and I'll show it to ya. lol

My grandpa owned a cabin at Pierre for 30 years and I have spent many days on this lake in days gone by, but it had been a few years since I had fished there. It always contained a variety of fish, but a moonlight biologist has added bluegills to the mix since my last visit. They seem to be doing well. I caught the biggest bluegills I personally have ever seen. Largest was 8 1/2 inches, another was 8. Lots of little ones too, of course.

In the late 70's another moonlight biologist put crappies in the lake. It was primarily a trout and kokanee lake then. With no predator fish to keep them under control, the crappies had seriously over populated the lake by the early 80's. It was filled with millions of 4-5 inch crappies. WDFW decided to plant bass to try to control the crappie. It worked. A few years later we started catching crappie in the 8-12 inch range and some pretty fair bass for a mountain lake with cold water. [up to 3 lbs]
Now its hard to even find a crappie. It might be time for the state to add a few of those muskies to the lake now to eat some bass. There are bass everywhere! We saw 100's of them swimming along the weed banks and in the shallows in the crystal clear water. Small groups fallowed our boat like miniature sharks. Was kinda weird. Most were in the 6-8 inch range but we saw several in the slot range and couple that may have been over. Unfortunately we only hooked the little ones.

We trolled for trout and kokanee one evening for a couple hours. Sammi hooked a couple but lost them before they got in the boat. August was always the slowest time there but usually better than it was this week. It should pick up again in September.

Pierre Lake has a nice forest service campground with 15 camp sites, a boat launch and dock, and a swimming area. The lake is about a mile and a half long and 1/4 wide. Its a great place to camp. There is an abundance of wildlife at the lake. We saw just about everything that eats fish. Bald Eagles, Osprey, Kingfishers, a Loon family and even a family of Otters! They didn't live in Pierre Lake in the old days. I have only seen wild Otters once before in my life. It was a real thrill to see them! We are planning to go back again after Labor day.

Cheers,
Paul & Sammi

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