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Thanks for that link, Keith. That was not the result I would hope for. These are tough questions. Having high lakes, streams, and rivers as refuges from climate change is someithing WDFW bios have talked about for many, many years. I don’t like seeing that completely shot down.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Joining the Trail Blazers is the best way to get involved. Send me an email at trailblazer@mac.com.
Nice! It can be surprising just how small creeks can be that have fish. Often the fish got there because they dropped down from stocked lakes. And way back in the day Trail Blazers often stocked mountain streams.
Thanks for posting that Matt. We were up at the Colchuck (Stuart Lake) trailhead on a weekday a couple weeks ago and it was a zoo. I can see how traffic might get snarled on a weekend.
I’ll be curious if you see any signs of winter kill this year. I stocked a small west side lake just north of MRNP that I’ve stocked every 4-years since 2011 and the fishing has been very consistent. But it winter killed this year (the only fish we found were dead on the bottom). I’m wondering if it was a localized problem, or if it was a particularly difficult winter everywhere.
This is a great question. I’m not sure how far down the river you would need to go to find fish, but my best guess is that you wouldn’t have to go very far. I’m going to hazard a guess fish will start showing pretty much as soon as you get off the steep hillside and hit the valley bottom.
Those sorts of in-between elevation lakes are kind of hard to find. The lakes in the Chuckanuts might be open. Or Smelling and Julia. Something like Pine or Spider Lake in the Olympics might be an option this time of year.
