I actually took this picture while fighting a smallmouth bass. I had already caught 5 along the rip rap of Pend d'Oreille Bay and had this one on when the sun did what you see here. I couldn't resist. Holding the rod between my knees, I let the bass do whatever while I took my digital out of my shirt pocket and put it on this scene, wide angle, vertical.

That's exactly what I was looking at on a perfect end-of-June morning this 2007, two hours before work just outside the city limits of Downtown Sandpoint.

It was a perfect bass morning for fishing tube worms which you do by casting near structure. You let the tube worm settle. (It's a weighted jig with a soft body that looks and acts like a crayfish when handled correctly.)

You wait a moment, then move it slightly on the bottom. That's usually where you'll get the strike. But some follow or see your lure as you begin to bring it up over the heavy lay of rocks that were put there by the Army Corp of Engineers to prevent further erosion to this long shoreline. The engineers didn't know the smallmouth bass would move into these waters and so unwittingly, they created prime bass water for certain times of the year, particularly May and June.

What a way to start the day!

###Dwayne K. Parsons

Bass Explosion on Pend Oreille

Prior to the last three or four years, Lake Pend Oreille saw little in the way of smallmouth bass fishing. We've had largemouth in the system for years. We fished for them primarily in the spring throwing skirted jigs and spinners into murky sloughs. We'd catch a few. Now and then one of us would get into the right place at the right time and woowee--twenty or thirty fish later, we'd have a story to tell.

But you never heard of smallmouth in this fishery back then--until around the turn of the century. North Idaho experienced an unreasonable snow melt assisted by heavy rains in the spring of '97 (~March 20) and the Army Corp had already begun to bring the lake up to level when the torrents came down off the mountains. The dams couldn't quite handle the load. Though they held, we had flood conditions. In the process, smallmouth bass were washed down into the Pend Oreille.

By 2000, 2001 and 2, a few fishermen began catching them. Others who knew what they were doing came from elsewhere and rumor spread quickly that Lake Pend Oreille was about to explode with a new fishery. They were right. Smallmouth, prone to structure, have taken over the riprap shorelines and rocky areas of this massive lake body. With an ample supply of perch, crappie, peno, pike minnow and other minnow species, small mouth lacked nothing in the way of food. Now we're catching fish quite frequently in the 6-pound class, with a few larger and stories are circulating of smallmouth bass getting off that could weigh in the 7 to 9-pound range.

Anyone who wants to test the explosion theory has only to throw a tube worm and fish it properly around a piling or rock structure, especially in late May and on through June into July. Even fly fishermen are trading their trout dreams for small mouth. Think about it. I've caught several good fish already off the shores of Downtown Sandpoint! It takes very little time to be on the lake, boat or no boat, and catch good fish after work or in the early morning before the clock starts. On the right days, you can do this even during lunch hours.

Growing up here I never imagined Lake Pend Oreille, noted for its historic Kamloops, Kokanee and Bull Trout fisheries, would ever become famous as a spiney ray lake.

But it is.

###Dwayne K. Parsons

Men at Work

I'm netting yet another fine Lake Trout for Ward Tollbum in this photograph. Ward is a fine arts painter and picture frame craftsman with a shop in downtown Sandpoint. He's also a knowldgeable naturalist who grew up on the shores of this lake and knows North Idaho like his backyard. Further and without flattery, Ward is a true American sportsman with a heart to share his knowledge with others. He also has a keen sense for what works, why it works, where and when.

I was on the water this particular morning with Ward and his daughter, Delci, for my first experience jigging for Mackinaw. I now have great faith in the technique.

We're dropping weighted lures, of which quite a variety exists, into deep water to imitate wounded bait fish. We're fishing between 90- and 120-foot depths where we've graphed a number of lake trout on the fishfinder. The jig is fairly heavy, weighing between 2 and 5 ounces. It hits the bottom, your line goes slack. You tighten and then jerk the rod tip well up into the air; the higher the better because the monofilament stretches at that depth. The lure jumps up off the bottom and settles down again with a dying flutter when you bring your rod tip down.

Mackinaw will hit your imitation at any point, probably thinking it's an easy take. If they don't actually take the lure, you may snag them as they come in to swing at it or investigate.

Only a week prior to my visit, Ward took national bestselling author Foster Cline (Love and Logic) out for his first Mackinaw trip and they caught 13 in one morning using this technique. I don't yet have a picture of that day but I hope to obtain one and I'll share it when I do.

Idaho Fish & Game currently has a bounty on Mackinaw having determined this deep water predator is a little too effective on taking Kokanee, which once swam by the millions in Lake Pend Oreille. So there's no limit to numbers you can take and the bounty is $15/head. Thirteen times fifteen equals...hmmm. Effective encouragement. Certainly pays for the gas to get there. But it helps also to have a little knowledge from an ardent fisherman like Ward who's spent countless hours, days and weeks learning what he knows about the fish of Lake Pend Oreille.

And here's one for you, that fish I'm netting for Ward was the last of the day. He hooked it unwittingly by snagging the loop in a Fish & Game tag that had been placed behind the dorsal fin. With all that leverage the fish fought hard but in the end lost to Ward's deft handling. You can see the tag attached just behind the dorsal fin in this photograph.

Some guys are just lucky, I guess.

But then, where the tag was once worth a hundred bucks, we learned later it had expired by the time Ward caught this laker. Some guys aren't quite as lucky as we think they are.

###Dwayne K. Parsons

Relationships

For me, fishing is all about relationships and there are two kinds that build from the experience. One is your relationship with others. A kind of bonding takes place on stream and lake that shares no other common ground. Any two or more people can build a relationship around fishing that they might not formulate elsewhere in quite the same way.

Enjoying the prize catch is in part hearing from another you respect say something like, "Wow, nice fish!" and mean it.

The other kind of relationship has to do with the environment in which you fish. It's not just understanding fish species and the techniques best used to catch them, not just about understanding how that species interacts with it's realm either. It's your total mindless (no thought) experience with the beauty of the whole place, the setting, the weather, the time of day, the water--everything.

Relationships. The photo I provide here was rendered from the original in Photoshop using some of the enhancement tools. I've given it the title Elderberry Skies. It's one of my favorite fishing images.

The father is Sandpoint artist, Dan DeAlba and that's his son, DJ. I asked this young boy how he spells his name. "It's simple," he said matter of factly, like the young scholar he is, "D...J," and then walked on.

###Dwayne K. Parsons

Far From Dead

Many of the folks who've fished Lake Pend Oreille in the last year or so complain that the fishery that once was here is no longer, that the notoriously big Gerrard rainbows are gone. They are certainly less common, but fishing with Ward Tollbom and his daughter Delci, we had at least three pass directly beneath our fish finder between 30 feet and 60 feet down. That's rainbow depth. The reasons for the changes in fishable species in this lake are many, but the fact is the primary food fish, Kokanee, has too many effective predators seeking its nutrious flesh.

But I would like to say that I think this lake is far from dead. It's just changing, like the demographics of California and Vancouver, British Columbia. Change in populations is inevitable in some ways. If you are as old as I am (gray-haired will do) and grew up in North Idaho, you would never have believed that wild turkeys would roam these woods and fields in such great abundance as they do now--and in all my high school days of hunting for whitetail deer in the fall I never once saw a moose track, and elk were scarce where they are now abundant. North Idaho has changed.

The state record Kamloops was caught in 1947, just a couple of months before I was born. I didn't get here in time to enjoy the kind of fishery this lake provided then. Kokanee (land-locked sockeye salmon) that generally ran an average of 11 and 12 inches swam Lake Pend Oreille in the millions and those huge longer-living Gerrard rainbows locally called Kamloops fed on them.

We still have Kokanee in this lake system but they are in danger of collapsing. They've been recognized as in the danger zone for more than fifteen years. A similar abundant fishery of kokanee disappeared from Priest Lake where I caught them by the bucket full when I was a boy. The lakes change, sometimes not for the better.

But let's look at Lake Pend Oreille. No one can deny its changing, but it is certainly not dead. Mackinaw (deep dwelling, voracious Lake Trout) , like the one shown here, are still swimming in relative abundance. We saw many blimps on the bottom flat where we jigged water 110 to 130 feet deep. Those were mackinaw. Despite efforts to gill net them out of abundance, they are still there and will be. The lake is too big to catch them all, providing too many places where they can reside.

Of the five lake trout taken in Ward's boat that early June morning, two had 8 and 9 kokanee respectively in their stomachs, as seen in this photo. The point I'm making is that the lake is not dead; it is just changing. To catch large fish frequently, you've got to change with it.

### Dwayne K. Parsons