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“I don't know. But some of the lakes around Mt St Helens had partial kills and limited recruitment for a while after Mt St Helens erupted. During that period their fish grew larger, but most, if not all, of the fish in those lakes later reverted to their original stunted condition. That could be one reason you might be getting mixed messages. The fish were larger for a while but have overpopulated again. I don't know much of anything about that lake, so this is purely wild speculation. I guess you'll have to go up and find out :)”
“You should be able to catch fish in any of the lakes. The scenery is outstanding and camping is excellent. There will probably be people around, though.”
This makes me wonder when the shelter at Tusco was rebuilt. MB was there in ’72 and ’76. Here are a few other comments from through the years:
1965-Shelter dirty
1968-Shelter at Pratt is gone
1968-Shelter rehabilitated
1968-Shelter was in fine condition
June 1969-Cabin in good shape
July 1969-Shelter boarded up, must be trail crews
Aug 1969-Shelter still in very good shape
1970-Heard the cabin is in terrible shape
1975-The old shelter is still mostly there. Too bad people won’t respect these structures.That’s what I have. It doesn’t shed a lot of light…
I visited both the My Lake cabin and the Tusco cabin in 1981.
“I would have called the structure at Tuscohatchie a cabin as opposed to, say, the structure at Nordrum which I would have called a lean-to. The shelter at Tuscohatchie had 4 walls, and as I recall, a peaked roof. The Nordrum shelter had a slanted roof and only 3 walls. The My Lake cabin had a slanted roof and 4 walls.”
“There are two kinds of bubbles I like, the slip bubble and the teardrop shaped bubble. The teardrop bubble has an eyelet at each end. I clip one end to a snap swivel at the end of my line and tie two pound leader to the other end. I generally make the leader 2 to 3 feet long. The bubble can face either way depending on what you want to do. If the heavy end of the bubble is facing toward the fly it will tangle a lot less when you are casting. If the heavy end faces toward your rod the bubble will make a swimming motion in the water which can be especially useful if you want action on the fly and you are trolling it behind a boat. I generally fish it so the heavy end faces toward the fly because I like to control the action on the fly, and I don't like tangles. You can bring the fly in slowly, with small jerks, or by popping your bubble with a heavy rod twitch. I recall that the day I fished Cheval Lake the fish wanted the fly retrieved slowly with no action. I can't remember when to pay my bills, don't ask me how I remember that detail of what the fish liked in an obscure lake I fished in 1988. ^^^^The slip bubble is oval shaped with a hollow tube running through the middle. The line is passed through the tube and a snap swivel tied onto the end of the line with 2 lb leader tied to the swivel. When a fish hits the fly with this setup the line is supposed to be able to slide through the bubble. These bubble are weighted by half filling them with water, or completely filling them if you want the bubble to sink. I caught a nice 17″ RB a couple weeks ago with a sunken bubble and Wolley Bugger. Again, you can impart action to the fly as with the teardrop bubble.”
“The Cheval Lake in Washington is overpopulated with CT, there is a Cheval Lake in the Eagle Cap Wilderness in Oregon that is overpopulated with EBs.”
“I've got a picture of the cabin, but unfortunately I don't have my slide scanner right now so I can't post it.”
Could be partial or occasional partial winter kill. Or maybe the spawning beds are so limited they aren't producing enough fry to overpopulate.
“That's really interesting. Those crawfish can be voracious and they may well attack shore spawning EB redds. I've never heard of, nor considered that before. Crawfish are also darned nutritious, so maybe you saw a combined effect.”
“You can't go wrong with the Foss Lakes. Copper. Little, and Big Heart. Malachite, etc. You'll find CT, RB and EB up in that drainage and some beautiful scenery.”
The fish end up reaching a sort of steady state. There are so many fish in the lake that every niche is filled and the food supply has been cropped down. Every time you eliminate a fish, a young one comes in and takes its place.
Typically, trout sexually mature at age 3. Up until that point all food they take in goes to growth. Once they sexually mature all nutrition starts going to gamete production. If there is excess, above what is needed to produce eggs or sperm, then it will go into growth. In lakes with too many fish there just isn’t enough food for growth. That’s why they quickly shoot up to that 6-8″ size and then basically stop growing.
Only once have I seen a lake with a stunted population where a fish turned to eating fry and grew larger then the other fish in the lake. That was in a Montana lake where the fish were stunting at 10-12″ instead of the 6-8″ we typically get. The lake had a lot of food, but there were still too many fish and they were showing the typical large head and skinny body associated with stunting. I caught one 16 incher that was full of fry. When the fish can only get to 6-8″ they don’t get big enough to turn to eating fry as an important part of their diet as that one had and that’s why you don’t find any lunkers.
“The westslope cutthroat we use here comes from Twin Lakes near Lake Wenatchee. They are mountain lakes and the fish are beautifully adapted to that environment. Unfortunately, because given any sort of water movement and gravel like a spring in the lake or a bit of stream flow over shore gravel and they'll reproduce. Now, they are only stocked where they have a track record of not reproducing. Some varieties of RB, most notably Kamloops RB they planted in the fifties and sixties often over reproduced, too.”
“Browns haven't been terribly effective at thinning populations, but the browns get really, really big and tough to catch. I know of at least one lake were the brookies have gained some size and fat, but not a lot. Still, the chance for large browns is a huge improvement in the fishery. I'd like to see a rigerous test of tiger trout, but I haven't seen it yet. There have been studies with tiger muskies and they've been very, very effective on the EBs. Hopefully we'll start testing some tiger muskies here in WA next year.”
