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