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As it stands right now fish cannot be stocked in the North Cascades National Park. A bill to allow fish stocking in the park passed the house and is currently in committee in the Senate (H.R. 2430). A committee hearing was held last July, but so far nothing else has happened.
There isn’t a lot of stream fishing in the Washington Cascades. Most of the fish are in high lakes and the streams tend (with notable exceptions) to be too small and steep.
A boat would certainly help. You could troll a fly with that set-up and cover a lot of water. But you’d still be severely limited compared to a small spinning or conventional flyfishing setup. The fish always seem to rise just out of casting range no matter what set-up you are using :fishing:
I don’t have any direct experience with tenkara so take anything I say with the appropriate barrel of salt. Tenkera looks most suitable for stream and small river fishing because of the short casting distances. It looks like it would be fun in situations where you could stalk fish along the shore, but could otherwise prove frustrating.
In high lakes, fish can live for a long time, depending on the lake. I caught a high lake RB that was 13 years old and WDFW bios have aged them older then that. In shallow, warm lakes where fish grow quickly they might only live 3 or 4 years. But in high, cold lakes where they grow slowly they can live much longer.
If you are catching 40 fish an hour then it is likely they are naturally reproducing and have overpopulated the lake.
I’m a little late with this reply to your post, Allison. For some reason I can’t get a larger size version of your pic, but they look more like RB in the thumbnail. The one in my last post was a Yellowstone CT.
Wow, that’ll permanently change a lot up there. If the legel description is to be believed it looks like they will repair the Hilt Creek slide and close it past where the Illabot Peaks Rd takes off.
Alpacka recently came out with a new lighter weight boat called the Scout. It still isn’t as light as one of ours, but it is the best product I’m aware of. I’d recommend making your own hand paddles and their inflation bag isn’t as light as it should be, so that’s another place to potentially lighten up.
They’ll still show spawning colors and have eggs or sperm even if they can’t reproduce successfully.
Here are the members of the Subcommittee on National Parks followed by the state they represent. These are the Senators that need to hear from us this week. If you know someone who is a constituent of one of these Senators please have them contact their Senator.
Democratic Subcommittee Members
Mark Udall (Chairman)-CO
Byron L. Dorgan-ND
Mary L. Landrieu-LA
Robert Menendez-NJ
Blanche Lincoln-AR
Bernard Sanders (I)-VT
Evan Bayh-IN
Debbie Stabenow-MIRepublican Subcommittee Members
Richard Burr-NC
John Barrasso-WY
Sam Brownback-KS
John McCain-AZ
Jim Bunning-KY
Bob Corker-TNJeff Bingaman (ex officio member)-NM
Lisa Murkowski (ex officio member)-AKIt is sort of counter-intuitive that naturally reproducing fish might need to be removed from a lake. But when you get too many fish in a lake they wipe out their food supply. That is bad for animals native to the lake from zooplankton right up to amphibians and it is bad for the fishing because the fish can’t get over 8 or 10 inches long and they can end up very skinny. The trout will grow reasonably quickly for about 3 years until they sexually mature. At that point all energy will go into producing gametes and spawning before it will go into growth so if there isn’t surplus food they stop growing.
So I agree that we need to do something about these spawning populations. But I think we should come back with non-reproducing fish in low densities that don’t harm native biota. That’s the portion of this management plan they are shutting down.
Here’s the first post I’ve seen celebrating the 1 July deadline passing at National Parks Traveler. Lots of problems with this summary. Here’s one of my favorites:
“There is a small group of people who are very passionate about this, and they got the impression that starting today on July 2 we were going to be out there using poisons to remove fish from all of the lakes. And that’s not happening,” he said. “The principal action that we’re taking at this stage in the game is we’re doing nothing. By that I mean the most important step that we can take in terms of ecological restoration of these lakes is simply to stop introducing non-native species.”
And the very next sentence after saying they are doing nothing is:
Ashley Rawhouser, the park’s aquatic biologist, said crews will focus their efforts on removing fish from 27 lakes.
Although they are celebrating the deadline passing, t he fact is that Congress can still direct the park to allow fish stocking. We need to make sure our Senators know that. Letters are more important then ever.
