October 18, 2007

Dead fish mean economic

development for resort owner

By Jennifer Larsen

News editor

The Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife (WDFW) treated Sprague Lake on Oct. 9 with rotenone to remove all fish for restocking next spring. The state last treated the lake in 1985 and replanted it the following spring.

“Everybody will tell you it kept getting better and better,” Scott Haugen, owner of the Four Seasons Campground on Sprague Lake, said last week.

“The whole objective to why they did it in 1985 and what they’re doing now is to make a better fishery,” he said. Fishing was at its best between 1988 and the early 1990s because of restocking.

“The fishing has been really crappy the last three years, going down steadily,” Haugen explained. “This is the worst year we’ve had.”

The restocking is a positive economic boost to his business and the local economy because once the lake is stocked, fishers will start hanging around more. Last year, fishers couldn’t reach their limit.

When the lake is replanted, Haugen said the trout will measure about nine or 10 inches. By fall, they could measure 16-17 inches. “This lake is real fertile.”

Haugen said the state wants to make a largemouth bass hatchery as well as a crappie and bluegill fishery, but it could take three to five years to get it going.

He also said that the state caught some large-channel catfish. The plan is to return them to the lake and plant more, Haugen said.

According to a press release from the WDFW in May, restocking efforts next spring would include crappie, bluegill, largemouth bass, channel catfish, rainbow trout and possibly sterile tiger muskies. No walleye or smallmouth bass would be restocked.

The press release also stated that the treatment would restore the balance of game fish in the lake, which now has an excess number of predator species. Walleye, which prey heavily on other fish, make up 55 percent of the fish in the lake, according to a 2003 WDFW assessment.

On one of the beaches at Four Seasons Campground, small and large fish were washed up against the shoreline. Out of about 75-100 fish, only one was a walleye.

Journal photo by Stephen McFadden

FLOATING. Leaves rest on top of the water and a mass of dead fish at Sprague Lake last week after the lake was treated with rotenone by the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife.