Lake sockeye fishery on hold

YAKIMA -- Anticipation over a possible sockeye fishing season at Lake Wenatchee has blossomed to even greater levels over the past several days as two other similar fisheries appear unlikely to happen.

Hoped-for sockeye seasons on Lake Washington and Skagit County's Baker Lake "are both virtually a no-go," said John Easterbrooks, Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife's regional fish program manager.

"It was open for (sockeye) fishing in the Skagit River near Concrete and (state fishery managers) were hoping they could open a lake fishery in upper Baker Lake for the first time. A week or so (ago) they were talking about that maybe being a possibility, but now the number of fish has been not what they needed."

Likewise, Lake Washington, which must have enough fish to exceed the 350,000 spawning-escapement goal in order to justify a fishery, has gotten far fewer than that.

"The only show in town possibly still open is (Lake) Wenatchee," Easterbrooks said. "So everybody's focus is turning there."

But everybody will have to wait. The number of sockeye over Bonneville Dam -- 212,514 through Monday -- are fueling rampant anticipation, since 18 percent (roughly 38,000) are expected to be headed for Lake Wenatchee and only about 27,000 would be needed for fish managers to declare a fishery.

But although about 175,000 of those salmon have already made it as far up the Columbia River as Rock Island Dam in East Wenatchee, they're still not getting to Lake Wenatchee -- at all. As of Monday, not a single sockeye had been counted at Tumwater Dam; that dam on the Wenatchee River near Leavenworth, the last dam the salmon would cross on their way to Lake Wenatchee, is the critical counting point, and until fish managers can be sure 27,000-plus will be heading upriver from there, they won't consider opening a fishery.

What's the holdup? Why no sockeye yet at Tumwater?

It's probably a result of the early-summer snowmelt creating heavy flows on the Wenatchee River -- the same flows that have allowed rafting outfitters to continue doing whitewater trips on the Wenatchee much later than in normal years.

Now, though, those flows are finally slowing. They were down to about 3,600 cubic feet per second in the Leavenworth area, barely a third of what they were two weeks before.

When the sockeye begin pouring through Tumwater Dam, which has a highly efficient fish ladder and counting system similar to that at Roza Dam, the phones will be ringing off the hooks at regional wildlife offices with just one question: When will the Lake Wenatchee season open?

Almost certainly not until August, fish managers say. But when it does, it'll be crazy. There's only one primary public boat launch serving the lake, and that's at the Lake Wenatchee State Park, a busy, by-reservation campground with nearly 200 campsites. Another 200 to 300 boaters arriving to use the lake can make for quite a logjam at the launch.

"It has been an absolute zoo," said Rick Halstead, who, as a ranger at Lake Wenatchee State Park since 1993, has been through three of the five sockeye fisheries ever held there.

"There's a boat launch at the Glacier View campground, but it's really limited," Halstead said. "Really, the state park is the only real boater access."

A construction project several years ago to improve traffic flow and parking at the park has helped, Halstead said, but the simple volume of fisherman traffic -- and the anglers' early arrival -- could make the month of August pretty hectic for the park staff.

"We're at it 24 hours a day, seven days a week at that time of year already," Halstead said. "We've got (rangers) out at the campgrounds at midnight, and if we've got people needing to be there at the boat launch at 4 in the morning, that's a long day."

For the anglers hoping for this rare opportunity to lake-fish for sockeye, though, there's -- still -- a long wait.

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