Sprague Lake

[hewesfisher]

Tree huggers are united and political. We sportsmen are not.

And they are well funded. License fees don't provide anywhere near enough financial support to combat well funded politically active organizations. It would take well funded, pro-sporting organizations to lobby for our interests, and that's not happening on the same scale as those who actively lobby against us.

[YellowBear]

You fellas ever hear of a outfit called Keep America Fishing?

[tluedeke]

Given the amazing success at Moses Lake (it was dead water 15 years ago, but is an amazing fishery now), it might have been better for the WDFW to put impose spiny ray bag limits (hate to sound racist or judgmental, but I saw lots of Russian immigrants coming out of Sprague with 5-gallon buckets of crappie and perch from ice fishing - no body of water can handle that for any length of time). The other option which likely would be more cost effective than a total rotenone treatment would be to put a bounty on carp (a few thousand dollars generates a lovely carp shooting tournament), adjust lake levels (like they do in the Basin for carp control), or do selective rotenone treatment during the carp spawn in June.

While that body of water is extremely rich, managing it for trout is pretty cynical for WDFW (i.e. dog food trout == $$$$$). That is a superlative warm water lake, and although the trout are big, it is truly a waste - they should utilize colder bodies of water for trout. That lake used to be a beast for crappie, bluegill, and perch....

The really offensive thing to me is that the WDFW has to continually lie to spiny ray fisherman about how much like the past the fishery will become, rather than just being honest, coming out, and stating that hence it will be managed for foul tasting, but spectacularly huge trout....

[duffy]

tluedeke, agree 200%! I too have seen the immigrants hauling off buckets of fish and leaving a total mess of things. Also never could figure out how WDFW thought a 18' dishpan lake could support trout, at least ones you could eat. Same thing happened with our Pacific lake north of Odessa. They took a survey in the paper of what kind of fish people wanted. I saw many of the surveys and it was a good 80% spiney ray but when their results came out, it was supposedly overwhelmingly trout. Yeh right. It's all about job security and $$$.

[tluedeke]

Since those posts a couple of years ago, I've since moved out of the area. I'm curious, is Sprague still a fisheries management train wreck of a lake with only enormous (and nasty-tasting) trout in it? Or has the spiny ray (i.e. crappie, bluegill, but not LMB) finally rebounded?

[YellowBear]

No!

[hewesbob]

I have heard of LMB being caught but I have not seen any. The trout fishery was fantastic just before the lake froze over, 20" trout were common and they tasted very good smoked. I did read a report a couple days ago about a Vodka drinking group taking several limits each of large trout in one day ice fishing.