FISHING -- The annual Lake Pend Oreille "State of the Lake" public meeting will begin at 6 p.m. tonight at Ponderay Events Center ,401 Bonner Mall Way, Suite E, in Ponderay.

Idaho Fish and Game staff will give a presentation summarizing fisheries information and activities related to the Lake Pend Oreille fishery from the past year. A question and answer period will follow. 

"Overall, things are looking really good," said Andy Dux, regional fisheries manager.

"Estimates of kokanee are looking really good and all age classes continue on the upward trend.  As a result, that's provided a lot of food for the predators in the lake and the rainbow trout growth rates continue to improve opportunities for trophy size fish."

News about the "other predator," the nonnative lake trout, also is good, Dux said.

"We've seen it remain at what we consider a low density," he said. That means the more expensive suppression program using commercial netting can be scaled back to lower-cost maintenance efforts to keep the lake trout numbers low, he said. 

The invasive boom of lake trout in the lake was a major contributing factor to the dramatic crash of kokanee in the late 1990s and the closure of the kokanee fishing season in 2000.  Fish management efforts brought the kokanee back and the season was reopened in 2013.

 

 

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