Salmon/Steelhead -

Cowlitz River - Last week, 7 bank anglers at the barrier dam kept 3 steelhead and released 1. At Blue Creek, 19 bank anglers kept 2 steelhead and released 1 and 13 boat anglers had no catch. At Mission Bar, 1 bank angler had no catch.

Flows below Mayfield Dam had dropped to 4,940 cfs this morning.

Lewis River - Last week, 18 bank anglers kept 4 steelhead and released 2. Flows below Merwin Dam had dropped to 6,000 cfs this morning.

Bonneville, The Dalles, and John Day pools - Anglers continue to catch some steelhead.

Columbia River Forecasts -

First the good news -

Fall Chinook - Total forecast of 677,900 Columbia River fall chinook returning to the mouth of the river in 2002 would be the third largest return since 1948. (see attachment for specific stock forecasts).

Now the bad news -

Coho

Last year, the ocean abundance of Columbia River coho was estimated at 1.3 million fish. 873,000 were early stock and 429,700 were late stock.

In 2002, the ocean abundance prediction is for 305,100 Columbia River coho. Its expected 161,600 are early stock and 143,500 are late stock.

Bottom line - This year's ocean abundance of Columbia River coho is only 23% of last year.

Sturgeon -

Bonneville, The Dalles, and John Day pools - Slow for legal sized fish.

Walleye and Bass - Slow for walleye. No in-sample effort for bass was found.

Trout -

Merwin Reservoir - 6 boat anglers kept 4 kokanee. Fish were around 12 inches in length.

Recent releases of ½ pound rainbows -

Klineline Pond near Hazel Dell - 2,000
Lacamas Lake near Camas - 2,100
Ice House Lake near Bridge of the Gods - 1,000
Kidney Lake near North Bonneville - 2,000
Little Ash Lake near Stevenson - 1,100

Smelt -

In general - Sport dipping was slower last weekend than mid-week on both the Cowlitz and Lewis rivers.

Cowlitz River on Saturday Feb. 9 -

Gearhart Park near Longview - 0-2 smelt per dip
Kelso to Carnival Market 0-6 smelt per dip
Rocky Point to Lexington 0-6 per dip

Water temperature was 42 degrees

Lewis River on Saturday Feb. 9 -

Very slow. 0-2 smelt per dip in the dark hours

Lewis River on Sunday Feb. 10 -

Very slow. Just upstream from the forks, it was taking approximately 2 hours to get a 10 pound limit during the daylight hours. Lots of birds still present.

Stacie- I'm curious about Lake Merrill. I knew it was getting steady plants every year up until 1995 when the heavy rains washed out the access to the boat launch. I've not been able to find any plant info since. Any bits of info would be appreciated. I've heard rumors of "special" rainbows in the last couple of years, but all I've caught were cutbows and browns. If Browns have not been planted since 95, how long can the earlier plants survive? Any chance of Tiger trout showing up there?

The population at Merrill had been self sustaining so we decided to leave it alone and not mess with it. However, in the last couple of years we had received complaints of lower fish numbers so last fall we planted several thousand fingerling browns into the lake.

We have no plans of any more plants until we evaulate the lake and find out how it is doing. Each year one of our bios goes up and samples the lake to determine fish condition and general fish health. Hopefully we will find good things occurring!

We have placed Donaldson trout into the lake in the past which seem to be doing very good.

We will probably not but tiger trout in there as they are very aggressive and we don't want to upset the balance that we are currently trying to provide. We do have tigers in Forlorn Lakes though. I have heard of some beautiful fish being caught out of there!!

Let me know if I can answer anything else!

stace

Stace, where is Forlorn Lakes? I was looking at the lake index on www.washingtonlakes.com and did not see a listing for Forlorn Lakes.

Thanks for the update too!

Here is a link about the lakes. Gifford Pinchot National Forest lakes

Trouter, Thanks a bunch.