Northwest Fishing Reports

I was wondering if anyone from this board went to the Puget Sound Angler's Meeting at Mercer Island Community Center last night? It was posted in this forum awhile back that they were going to have a biologist from the State go over their huge 3 year in the making lake survey.

I did go to the meeting and I really enjoyed it. What they did basically was a huge survey of the lake along what is known as the (?) zone... sorry, it is an area from the shoreline out to about 15 ft. in water depth. They covered 40% of the entire lake shoreline, to include Mercer Island shoreline. Normally they cover about 10-15% of a lake. They sampled 41,000 fish over about 4-5 days. They did a comprehensive look at all the fish obtained, to include size measurements, weight measurement, aged determination, and a whole bunch of other stuff.

They sampled by means of electroshock, gill netting, and fyke netting.
At least one point to consider is that they can only sample within this "Shelf" 15' water colum, and therefor you have to realize that there would be assumably larger fish of certain species that weren't able to be sampled, i.e. the larger Cutthroats, and other silver types that spend more time out in the open water area of the lake.

Anyway, ( I probably shouldn't started this posting until I have the time to input the data) I have to run out, but I will post again with most of the data. It was really fascinating to see that they found representation of about 23 different species of fish. Some really weird stuff too.

quadradomus wrote: Some really weird stuff too.

Lets hear the weird stuff...

What kind of weird stuff ?

dang i want to hear this.

quadradomus wrote: They sampled 41,000 fish over about 4-5 days.

I wonder how many innocent cutthroat were zapped and killed. They did this earlier in the 90's and really didn't find out anything new. Talking to Kurt Fresh with NOAA Fisheries in Seattle was enlightening a year ago. He published a report along with Grad students at the University of Washington. Here is the link:

http://www.fws.gov/westwafwo/fisheries/ ... /FP227.pdf

It's sad to see so many get innocently zapped, but this tells us that there are so many in there the WDFW doesn't really care if you take your limit of trout every day if you chose to do so. Walleye are also becoming more prevalent in Lake Washington, due to increased abudance of feed such as perch which eat smolt, etc. something worth considering if you're a walleye guy/gal.

Does anyone know when the next meeting is for the Lake Washington Anglers Association? I'd love to attend, maybe meet some of you serious die hard fishing fanatics.

kuttkilla wrote:

quadradomus wrote: They sampled 41,000 fish over about 4-5 days.

I wonder how many innocent cutthroat were zapped and killed. They did this earlier in the 90's and really didn't find out anything new. Talking to Kurt Fresh with NOAA Fisheries in Seattle was enlightening a year ago. He published a report along with Grad students at the University of Washington. Here is the link:

http://www.fws.gov/westwafwo/fisheries/ ... /FP227.pdf

It's sad to see so many get innocently zapped, but this tells us that there are so many in there the WDFW doesn't really care if you take your limit of trout every day if you chose to do so. Walleye are also becoming more prevalent in Lake Washington, due to increased abudance of feed such as perch which eat smolt, etc. something worth considering if you're a walleye guy/gal.

Has anyone bumped into any walleye? I read in a report a couple years ago someone caught one fishing for trout. Walleye are really good to eat.

kzoo wrote:

kuttkilla wrote:

quadradomus wrote: They sampled 41,000 fish over about 4-5 days.

I wonder how many innocent cutthroat were zapped and killed. They did this earlier in the 90's and really didn't find out anything new. Talking to Kurt Fresh with NOAA Fisheries in Seattle was enlightening a year ago. He published a report along with Grad students at the University of Washington. Here is the link:

http://www.fws.gov/westwafwo/fisheries/ ... /FP227.pdf

It's sad to see so many get innocently zapped, but this tells us that there are so many in there the WDFW doesn't really care if you take your limit of trout every day if you chose to do so. Walleye are also becoming more prevalent in Lake Washington, due to increased abudance of feed such as perch which eat smolt, etc. something worth considering if you're a walleye guy/gal.

Has anyone bumped into any walleye? I read in a report a couple years ago someone caught one fishing for trout. Walleye are really good to eat.

There are 3 reports in all of Washington's database I've found here and I know of someone who has hooked two by Arrowhead Pt. fishing for perch in 40' of water. It was nice, too. They are in there, but in low, low, numbers.

the suspense... hurry up quad!

See the seperate thread I put the results in....... titled "Results..."