State to restock poisoned Lake Davis with trout

PORTOLA – Thousands of Eagle Lake trout are in line for new homes Friday in Lake Davis when the California Department of Fish and Game begins to make good on its promise to plant 11 tons of trout in the Plumas County reservoir.

Among the trout scheduled for release by hatchery trucks are 3,000 up-to-13-pound trophy trout that will be netted by hand and placed in the water at Honker Cove, said Randy Kelly, the department's pike project manager.

The fish releases are part of a two-day restocking that will culminate Saturday, when anglers and the local community will celebrate the return of Lake Davis as a world-class trout fishery.

Free fishing seminars will cover topics ranging from casting techniques to fishing safety and ethics. Children's activities include fishing contests, making fish prints and a special visit by Smokey Bear.

Fish with $10 reward tags will be released to help determine the catch rate, Kelly said.

It's all part of a state effort to restore the Lake Davis fishery and the local tourist economy after a $16.7 million chemical treatment in September that killed all fish and aquatic life in the reservoir near Portola.

Designed to rid the reservoir of invasive northern pike, the poisoning used liquid rotenone, an organic insecticide, to eradicate the pike that were proliferating in the shallow waters.

State officials feared the pike would migrate downstream into the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta where the pike would threaten the state's native and commercial fisheries.

Trout fishing at Lake Davis has been declining since 1994, when pike were first found there.

Eradicating the voracious Midwestern native species was the goal of a 1997 chemical treatment, which ended up costing the state $20 million.

But pike were rediscovered in Lake Davis 18 months later, resulting in a second chemical treatment last year.

After the poisoning, state officials removed nearly 50,000 pounds of dead fish from the reservoir and its tributaries.

Less than 1 percent of the fish removed from the former trophy-trout lake was trout, Kelly said.

Pike represented around 6 percent of the total.

More than 80 percent were bullheads, he said.

Only time will tell if the chemical treatment successfully eliminated the pike from Lake Davis, Kelly said.

Trout, however, will be teeming after Fish and Game Department hatchery trucks release them Friday.

More than a million fish are scheduled for release into Lake Davis during the 2008 fishing season, Kelly said.

Saturday's celebration starts at 10:30 a.m.

For further information contact Fish and Game officials at (530) 832-4754.