Trout pens are boon to fishing
In a tiny Northern California nook, an elementary school teacher has figured out how to bring back great trout fishing to small lakes.
Louise Bigham, who teaches 6-, 7- and 8-year-olds, directs a program at Lewiston Lake in Trinity County in which she grows rainbow trout to large sizes in pens at a dock and then releases them for anglers.
“In six months, we grow 12-inch rainbow trout to 18 inches,” she said.
The program could be a perfect fit at many lakes in the Bay Area and across the California. In the past five years, the size and number of trout planted by the Department of Fish and Wildlife has been reduced to the point that many lakes without outside plants cannot sustain fishing success.
The way it works at Lewiston is that the department provides small trout for submerged pens at the Pine Cove Marina dock. With a solarpowered electronic feeder, Bigham then feeds the trout four times a day.
“I have three pens,” Bigham said. “In two of them, we grow the trout to about 18 inches and then let them go. In the other pen, we get them real big. There are some humongous ones in there we’ll let go later this year.”
Larger-scale trout pen programs have helped jump-start fishing success at Lake Berryessa near Napa, Shasta Lake north of Redding, Lake Almanor (Lassen County), and Collins and Englebright lakes in the foothills above the Sacramento Valley.
In central Washington, Rufus Woods Reservoir, a 51-milelong lake on the Columbia River above Electric City, has a vast trout pen program run by the Colville Tribes. Trout fishing there is among the best in the country. We used flyfishing gear from a boat, like fishing the great trout lakes of western Canada, and caught and released trout in the 25-inch range.
A key at Lewiston, Bigham said, is experts from several agencies and organizations backing the project and keeping it mistake-free: Monty Currier, the DFW associate fishery biologist who helped approve the plan; Joe Zustak, a fisheries biologist from ShastaTrinity National Forest who built the pens; and Gary Coe of the organization Kokanee Power, who helped pay for the trout chow and provide oversight.
“What Louise is doing at Lewiston is the kind of project that makes for better fishing,” Coe said.
The pens cost roughly $3,000 to $8,000, Coe said, and then it costs about $1,000 a year to feed the fish. Currier noted that the pens need to be occasionally hauled out and cleaned, and at Lewiston that has worked out to about every two years.
Lewiston is a small, beautiful reservoir the DFW (then as the Department of Fish and Game) once stocked with high numbers of trout. The lake is always full, fed by 50-degree water from Trinity Dam, has a 10-mph speed limit, beautiful campsites and a small marina and store at Pine Cove. It once had some of the best flyfishing for trout in California, but like so many lakes, went into decline.
“We had an opportunity to make it better,” Bigham said, “and we did it.”
One key at Lewiston is that the water stays cold yearround, which means Bigham can release fish from the pens any time of the year. That includes peak summer and early fall, when family campers and serious flyfishers, respectively, are most apt to make their visits.
“That’s a huge plus for us,” she said. “I’m able to have a fishing tournament when the weather is nice in late summer and make sure some real big ones are out there.”
At lakes where surface temperatures warm significantly in summer, like those in the Bay Area, trout would need to be grown out over winter and then released in spring.
In the greater Bay Area, only nine of 73 lakes have fishing programs, which consist of anglers paying a daily trout fee that goes to purchase fish from private hatcheries.
My experience is that pengrown trout look and act like wild trout — that is, they become naturalized in their homes and quickly figure out what it takes to thrive. Some flyfishers scoff at any planters, but I have seen planted trout in mountain lakes that took on the characteristics of wild fish, including their skin changing from white to red based on a diet change to freshwater crustaceans. In addition, fisheries scientist William Cox said that planted trout provide an important buffer that keeps native rainbow and brown trout from being caught, often by summer vacationers who want a trout fry over their campfire.
Marina operators, such as those at Collins and Englebright, sometimes become responsible to fund trout pen programs. Another long-term source that could be sustained is fine money from violations of the fish and game code. By law, half the money from court fines is returned to the county of origin and administered by the counties’ fish and game commissions to support projects to improve fishing and hunting.
“There’s no reason we can’t make the trout fishing great again,” Bigham said. “We’re seeing it right here.”