Silver Lake Open Cowlitz County (March19th)

[tnj8222]

Coulon is right down the hill from me, wawa and I will be good friends or enemies only time will tell.

[kzoo]

Coulon is right down the hill from me, wawa and I will be good friends or enemies only time will tell.

Let me know if you need any pointers.

[fishingmachine]

Same here tnj ill do what i can to help.

[Stacie Kelsey]

Hey guys -

I'm beginning a very intensive creel survey study on the lake - hoping to make it up for this event to check some fish. I'll mostly be hanging at our public access.

So I might get a chance to meet you when I interview you about your fishing experience.

We are hoping to get a good picture of what is going on with the fish population. I will also be tagging a lot of bass here in the next few weeks so be on the look out for any tags. It's important that information gets sent back to me. As soon as I start the tagging, I will make a post as a reminder.

stace

[kevinb]

Hey Stacie,look forward to chatting with you. The actual weigh in will be held at the Silver Lake Resort

[tnj8222]

Whitecaps started at like 10. Lets hope its not so windy on sat.

[Ocktane]

Yes, lets hope...otherwise it may be a looong day.

[Stacie Kelsey]

Unfortunately I won't be making it up tomorrow, but will be at future contests along with the creel work that will actually start next week and not this week (managed to mess up my back).

Best of luck and if you guys could please report back on what you see. I'll also get a copy of your contest report but I'm more interested in individual perceptions of the fishery up there right now.

I'm on the Advisory Council that is working to figure out how to determine why the water quality is continuing to tank as well as determining how to get some vegetation back into that lake.

[Amx]

Did they get rid of all those grass carp? Or at least reduce the number by a minimum of 50 percent?

[Amx]

The water quality has gone down because the weeds are gone. The weeds filtered the dirt out of the water. Now any wind or current drags up sediment and so the water is milky/dirty.

[Stacie Kelsey]

The water quality issue isn't just the lack of vegetation. We are going to do a major monitoring study starting hopefully this summer to determine what the causes are. It could be septic, it could be the common carp, it could be run off from the watershed, the landfill, etc., lots of things and none an easy fix.

There still are grass carp but no where near the numbers. People need to stop throwing their lawn clippings in and feeding those that are left. I'll be doing a survey very soon to see if I can find out just how many are left.

There will be no additional grass carp stockings in that lake, despite numerous requests to do so.

[BillMcMurry]

I was suprised 2 weeks ago when i threw the boat in at silver. I could of swore up and down that the clairity of the water was never that bad lol but its been years also, and for the recored, no bites...... saw one catfish messing around with the aqua veiw down at the damn.

[Stacie Kelsey]

I'm kind of thinking the common carp may have more to do with things than the grass carp at this point but won't know until we do some surveys.

[kevinb]

The water quality issue isn't just the lack of vegetation. We are going to do a major monitoring study starting hopefully this summer to determine what the causes are. It could be septic, it could be the common carp, it could be run off from the watershed, the landfill, etc., lots of things and none an easy fix.

There still are grass carp but no where near the numbers. People need to stop throwing their lawn clippings in and feeding those that are left. I'll be doing a survey very soon to see if I can find out just how many are left.

There will be no additional grass carp stockings in that lake, despite numerous requests to do so.

Thank you Stacie,would some of this also explain some of the rather large algae blooms this lake has from time to time?

[kevinb]

I will be there wednesday afternoon through sunday. If you see me Say hi. brown 16 ft terry bass boat.

Best of luck out there. I will be at Mayfield but hoping to stop by and scope out the weigh ins

[Stacie Kelsey]

Thank you Stacie,would some of this also explain some of the rather large algae blooms this lake has from time to time?

Absolutely. And that's why its such a concern since the lake has been closed because of the blue-green algae. Blue-green algae is healthy in good doses but not in the levels that caused the lake to be closed.

So, trying to determine where these spikes are coming from is going to put us that much closer to figuring out how to 'fix' the lake. The truth is, this lake is wanting to go back to being a marsh and it's putting up a good fight. We have to try and interrupt that process.

Good luck to everyone up there today! Give a report if you get the chance!

[lowvw]

Well, you didnt miss much by not being there. 0 fish caught from 27 boats.....Tough one!

[Anonymous]

Yikes. But sadly, I was kind of expecting that. I've been getting a lot of complaints about the fishery up there the last several months.

Bummer. Well, we'll see what we can find when I get the sampling started.

Thanks for the report!

ETA: John (my boss) said to pass on his thoughts are probably the water temp/weather issues could have had a lot to do with it. We are hoping it will pick up!!

[kevinb]

Thats a bummer to hear. I know this tourney can come down to one fish and for that reason alone,I figured there would be bucket loads.

[Eoso]

My understanding is that it's just not much of a lake even at the best of times.