Does anybody target ling over there? I have been living in wyoming for the last 6 years and we target them through the ice. They are an excellent eating fish but a little bit of a pain to clean.

Zack

I have fished the ling up in Chelan for a long time. It used to be good fishing before they put those #$$%@% lake trout in there. Now good luck finding any ling in there. Or maybe it was all the &^%#%&* bass fisherman who put bass in there. Either way they have basically killed the ling cod. I usually caught between 7 -15 ling in a day, Have not caught one in 3 years. But I have killed a lot of Lake trout.

I've been fishing Chelan for about 17 years now. Our odd burbot being caught trolling has continued on about the same. The Biologists have a couple of theories about the numbers drop of the burbot. First, is overharvest by humans. The unlimited hook set lines, then the 25 hook set lines, then 10, then 5 and finally their elimination. Second is disease. I give more credence to the gonad disease that we started seeing about 10 years ago. For a number of years, almost all the males showed signs of abnormally swollen and hardened testes. The pathologist agreed they were sick, but we never received feedback as to what the illness was or what (if anything) we could do about it. For more info call the regional fish bio: Art Viola. His number is 509-662-0452. The good news is the few that we have cleaned over the last two or three years have been normal. To bigzee44. There was a small cadre of local anglers that targeted them in the winter. I don't see them very much anymore. Last I heard Lake Roosevelt has a very healthy population of burbot. I also seem to recall that Bead Lake produced the last state record. Take Care,
Anton

I have read a couple latest reports about the concern of Burbot in Lake Chelan..
With what I know is that this last Year the Local Biologist in the fall was at Stehiken where he set a net trap to capture Kokanee at and around the mouth of the Stehekin River for spawning purposes but the Kokanee seemed to out smart him but the Burbot did not..He said that all he could catch in the net was Burbot and the numbers that he was catching was exciting to him. So my theory on this is that Burbot have been in Lake Chelan for a long long time way before Laketrout and other species that were introduced, and now that the population of laketrout and Salmon and other species are doing well in the lower Lake the Burbot had to change there location to survive..I have caught good numbers of Burbot in the upper reaches of Lake Chelan. Hope this helps for those that want to Venture to the upper Lake Chelan..