[size 1]Last night I went up to Henrys Lake to get some pix of the spawning trout. The water quality is very good and the fish are coming into the spawn house without showing stress from low water quality. Right now there have been 1500 this first week of the run and they are appearing to be on a regular bases. The hybrids coming into the spawn house are very large with several in the 8 to 10 pound range. These are males as the sterile females do not come into the hatchery. It was amazing to see the huge trout fight to get into the race-way.
More about this later - here are some pix of two of the huge male hybrids that were in the hatchery. [/size]
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The hatchery is on the north shore of the lake. bsflies could probably give you more details about exactly how open it is to the public. I know that the F&G normally welcome visitors and probably wouldn't mind a little extra help spawning the fish.
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memudman,
The hatchery is open for visitors to visit. The Fish and Game spawn every Monday and Thursday at 10 a.m. They also sort the fish that run into the hatchery almost every morning at 9 a.m. It you are taking a group, they ask that you call before you come up. They also need volunteers to help with the spawning and are willing to train. If you are headed up, I would suggest that you call Damon Keen at (208) 558-7202 to make sure that he is there and not in a meeting in Boise or Idaho Falls.
Bill
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[font "Verdana,Arial,Helvetica"][black][size 1]It is amazing how fast reported bad news travels in this fishing community. Last year was the best big fish year that I have ever had in my 50+ years of fishing Henrys Lake. There were only three of us fishermen that fished the lake consistantly all summer last year and we all had the best fishing, in terms of big fish, that we have ever had.
I took 62 fish over 10 pounds and three fish in the 20 pound range ( the largest was a 34 1/2 incher with a 24 inch girth). The key to the large fish was that they were all in water from 4 to 7 feet deep. For some reason they did not move out into the deeper water and most fishermen who fished Henrys, fished the deeper water and reported terrible fishing. The total numbers of fish have been down, but it looks like the numbers are coming back which will keep more fishermen interested. Also last season, the bait fishermen had a very tough time catching fish on Henrys. And since the fish were in the shallows, the trollers also had a tough time.
There appears to be some very interesting facts about the sterile hybrids in the lake. Not all hybrids are sterile, but the Fish and Game are trying to sterilize most of them. It appears that the largest fish in the lake are sterile females - they do not have any reproductive organs and do not run into the hatchery. The two hybrids pictured are both males and they run into the hatchery. (I guess they are like us male humans - we try!!!!) This lack of stress on the females at spawning time allows them to grow larger and their bodies balloon with the most of them at 27 inches having a girth of 20 to 22 inches. If you go back to last year's posts about Henrys Lake, there are some pix of these sterile females that I caught last year.
The Fish and Game also purchased 250,000 brook trout eggs from Canada and hopefully will have 100,000 fingerlings to plant this season. They will be planting some in June and some in September to check the survival rate of the two plants. Each plant will be marked differently to see what happens. The hatchery manager is excited to see the gill net results in May and the season to see what in happening. I am very optomistic that this season will have more fish - fewer large ones - but enough mixed in to keep me on the lake. Last year's number of big fish will be very hard to duplicate.
Sorry this is so long - but it may help some of you.
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bsflies,
Thanks for the additional information.
It's great that the F&G are doing something to promote the brook trout at Henry's. It would be nice if I could catch them out of there are a more regular basis.
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BSFlies. If the fish last year were trouble for the trollers( which I do not do) and for the bait guys how were you catching them so large and what set up were you using.
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I was fly fishing in 4 to 7 feet of water, usually in pockets in the weeds or right along a weed bank. I would go out early in the a.m. and "cruise" fish. This is done by moving slowly around the lake in my boat until I located several rising fish in an area - then I would anchor both ends of my boat so that it wouldn't swing back and forth and then I would fish hard.
The best line for me was a Uniform Sink II. The best flies were Light Olive Crystal, Half-assed Renegade, Mity Mouse and a Henrys Lake PT - in that order. The Light Olive Crystal took about 70% of my fish.
I would try to fish at least 100 yards from anyother fishermen and if a float tube or a pontoon boater showed up, I was gone looking for other fish. I believe that the movement on top of the water by floating devices spooks the larger fish out of the area. If pelicans come around they also get moved out of the area!!!!!
I also believe that there are only so many fish around a boat that can be caught. One fisherman in a boat catches as many as two or three fishermen in a boat - probably more. If there are two fishermen in a boat each can only fish a small area whereas one fisherman can fish 360 degrees around the boat.
Hope this helps - if you anymore questions let me know.
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