Scores of dead trout (poisoned?) in Stiletto Lake (North Cascades)

[BlakeHerrington]

This lake is just within the NCNP about 2 miles south of the major hairpin bend on Hwy 20 near Liberty Bell.

[Brian Curtis]

An NCNP crew must have been in there to poison the fish. They are getting really good at removing spawning populations. I don’t know what the management plan is for that lake, but there is a good chance we will be able to go back in with non-reproducing fish.

[BlakeHerrington]

Would there by a specific contact person at the NCNP who could/would confirm this?

Would the non-reproducing fish stocking require additional permission from the NCNP NPS? Seems like the now “best case” scenario is that the NPS lets volunteers collect some sterile fingerlings, lug them a long ways into a remote lake every few years, and this lake will go from a healthy non-stunted cutthroat population that it had for a century(?) to some kinda smaller cyclical volunteer-dependent population of triploids?

Am I missing something in that description?

[Brian Curtis]

NCNP says that they did not do any work up at Stiletto, though they are aware of the fish kill and received a couple videos. Unfortunately, it looks like they probably won’t be able to get a team up there this year to check it out but they will get up there next year.

There was a similar fish kill in Fern Lake (Chelan County) back in 2018 and the Forest Service never figured out for sure why it happened. They speculated that an algal bloom lead to a dissolved oxygen problem.

[Brian Curtis]

Blake, do you have an exact date on that Strava entry?

This is the third fish kill of this sort that has been documented. Copper Lake, Fern Lake (2017), and now Stiletto. All seem to have occurred in the late September time frame.

There was a bit of speculation around causes after the Fern Lake episode. There could have been an algae bloom with a sudden die off that caused anoxic conditions. Or the lake could have stratified during the hot summer and the fish kill occurred when the lake turned over and brought up anoxic water from the bottom. Algae would contribute to the turnover problem because it will sink to the bottom when it dies and use oxygen from the water as it decays.

[Sammy]

Hi Brian – the strava post was mine. I was up there on 9/28 around 4:30pm. According to the management plan, Stiletto is categorized as “Stocked with nonreproducing fish” so the plan is to “Discontinue stocking and monitor lake conditions”. I originally figured it was the NCNP applying chemicals but they said it was not them. Plus I think they are required to put up signs and the rangers are supposed to know to let campers know according to the management plan.

Bummer they won’t be able to get up there this year. It was a bizarre thing to see!

[Brian Curtis]

Hi Sammy, thanks for stopping by.

The cutthroat were naturally reproducing in Stiletto so the management plan had that wrong. Hopefully we will be able to resume stocking the lake with fish that can’t reproduce.

[Sammy]

There’s an interesting comment on a WTA trip report. Somebody commented that somebody told them that “some fisheries biologists had visited the lake the day before” which would have been 9/27.

[Brian Curtis]

I talked to NCNP biologists on 1 October and they had not been there. I wonder who had been or how that rumor got started.

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