I've fished Cascade lake on Orcas Island for years with reasonable luck. This year no one I've talked with has caught anything. No risers, nada. It really appeared that there were no fish at all in the lake except for some little bass. I heard a rumor that they were going to call in a "fish biologist" to see what is going on. Anyone know anything and willing to share? Thanks. -Old chum

I talked to a coworker that spent a weekend over there with a group and he said the only thing caught were large 'bows, slightly less than 1/angler in 3 days of fishing. NO silvers caught.

Went out the day after the opener for a couple hours; had only two hits, landing a single fat 16" bow. Sporadic hatches of chironomids and mays. Slow indeed. Mountain was treating me better--they're sipping on chironos here and there, but very few meat eaters waking up yet. I've been having a better time with the ling cod...and, for that matter, cabezon.

Haven't even been by the lake at sunset to see if the bows are sipping midges this last week...shouldn't we be seeing some ants hatching out soon?

There's a meeting with a state biologist at the fire hall on Saturday--5:30 I believe. Check the article about in in the last Sounder if you're on the island--it didn't seem to make it to their website. If you're interested I'll copy it here for you.

Thanks for the replies. I haven't fished mountain lake for some time but that would have probably been a better bet. My brother in law also had some good luck recently jigging for lings up there. Fishkisser, I would be interested in either the biology article or a link to it if you can manage. I had looked at the stocking schedule from the WFDW and it mentioned that the only thing stocked were cutthroat and kokanee. Are the rainbows in the lake from years ago?