Title slide.
Washington's High Lake fishery is not just about the fish. It's also about the settings - lakes in dramatic high elevation panoramasÉ
or with dramatic backgrounds and backdrops...
or in the Fall with dramatic surrounding coloration...
and sometimes with dramatic fish. This is a picture of John Thomas with a high lake rainbow that weighed about 4-5 pounds.
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Stocking rates have dropped dramatically as WDFW has learned how fragile the high lake resource is and how sensitive to over stocking. Stocking rates of over 1000 fish per acre in the 1950s are ten times current levels of less than 100 fish per acre. Often small, hand-stocked lakes are stocked at 50-75 fish per acre, every third year.
Hand stocking of high lakes is done with the support and oversight of the Washington Dept. of Fish & Wildlife (WDFW). Here biologist Bob Pfeifer is walking toward the camera and volunteer Russ Tolsma, at the Tokul Creek Hatchery, prior to a high lake survey and stocking trip in the 1980s.
The fry to be planted are transferred at the hatchery and weighed...
then poured into collapseable water containers...
the air is then squeezed out and replaced by pure oxygen...
resulting in a water container with fry ready for a trip into the mountains to their new home.
Here Mike Ward, past president of the Trail Blazers, puts a container of fry in his backpack surrounded by insulation to keep them cold for the trip up to the lake.
Here is an old Trail Blazer sign on a tree in the wilderness, a rare artifact that is now hard to find, although lakes planted by the Trail Blazers club are common.
This slide shows the changes in proportions of lakes stocked by hand, by truck, by fixed wing aircraft and by helicopter in the North Cascades. While stocking by air has replaced some hand stocking, especially for larger lakes, hand stocking remains a vital and necessary method for reliably stocking lakes smaller than ten acres.
Air stocking photo by Bob Pfeifer at the Arlington Airport. Pilot Tom Wilson (ret.) was helping to load. This was a standard Cessna 185 trip to stock 4-6 lakes.
The fry are brought to the airport in numbered containers with specific variety and number of fry for each lake...
They are then transferred to the aerated containers in the Cessna.
Here is an interior shot of the Cessna and the aerated containers ready for takeoff. When the lake is reached, the container for that lake is dumped into the rectangular opening at the pilot's left elbow.

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