A man fly fishes from the east bank of Fort Borst Pond during the annual fishing derby in April 2017.
The traditional start to lowland lake fishing season will get started on Saturday and the Centralia Lions Club is helping to host their annual youth fishing derby in order to mark the occasion.
Registration for the Centralia Youth Fishing Derby will begin at 9 a.m. at Fort Borst Park with official fishing hours lasting until noon. Prizes will be awarded by age groups with anglers split up between 3-6, 7-11, and 12-14. Each registered angler will be given a free hot dog and a container of milk.
This will be the 50th year that the Centralia Lions Club has been involved with the fishing derby. In honor of that half century of piscatorial assistance the first 200 registered anglers will receive a souvenir t-shirt donated by the Chehalis Indian Tribe. Additionally, prizes will be awarded by drawing beginning at noon. Prizes were donated by local businesses and associations, including the Centralia Firefighters Local Union #401, which is donating one bicycle for each age group.
The Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife will also be on hand with an informational booth in order to interact with young anglers and bait worms will be provided free of charge. Additionally, a trailer at the south end of the lake will have loaner fishing gear available for any anglers who do not have their own equipment.
In preparation for Saturday’s opener of several hundred lakes across the state on Saturday the WDFW has been busy stocking roughly 12 million hatchery trout and kokanee of various sizes for the six-month fishing season. About 2.1 million “catchable size” trout will be included in those stocking efforts and approximately 125,000 locally-stocked fish will weigh at least one pound each.
Those efforts have reached numerous local waterways so far. Fort Borst Park Pond was last planted on March 15 when it received 5,000 fingerling rainbow trout. It was also planted with 1,600 fingerling rainbows on Jan. 16. On April 11 both Kress Lake and Horseshoe Lake in Cowlitz County were planted with more than 3,000 small rainbow trout. At Mineral Lake 3,276 fingerling rainbow trout were planted on April 6, with an additional 6,474 small rainbows planted the previous day. Mayfield Lake received 4,020 half-pound rainbow trout on April 5, and on March 29 Swofford was stocked with 4,200 half pound rainbow trout to buffer the 4,400 fingerling rainbows it received on March 22.
“Although many lakes are open year round, the fourth Saturday in April marks the traditional start of the lowland lakes fishing season, when hundreds of thousands of anglers are expected to turn out to fish,” said Steve Thiesfeld, WDFW’s inland fish program manager, in a press release.
Those trout stocking efforts have been especially concentrated at South Lewis County Park Pond in Toledo. According to the WDFW, Tacoma Power recently planted the pond with 1,600 rainbow trout and that deposit of hatchery fish came just a few weeks after WDFW crews planted the popular fishing hole, alternately known as Wallace Pond, with 1,840 fingerling rainbows in early March.
Those fish will help to stoke the odds for the upcoming youth fishing derby at South Lewis County Park Pond on Saturday, May 12. Two days prior to that annual event the pond will close to the public in order to allow for one last planting of hatchery fish. South Lewis County Park Pond is scheduled to close beginning May 10, with the fishing derby set to take place from 8 a.m. until 1 p.m. on May 12. The pond will reopen to the public after 2 p.m. on the day of the derby, which is open to all children 14 years of age and under.
According to a press release from the WDFW, “This rule change is to ensure a successful fishing event. Several thousand rainbow trout will be stocked in South Lewis County Park Pond two days prior to the event to acclimate them to ensure they will bite while the kids are fishing.” To register for the event send an email to penny_lancaster@msn.com.
The impending lowland lake opener will serve as real-world test for a brand new, and highly touted, online Fish Washington application from the WDFW.
“The Fish Washington app is a planning tool that should be on every Washington angler’s smart phone,” said Thiesfeld, in the release. “It is designed to convey up-to-the-minute fishing regulations for every lake in the state.”
During the six-month lowland lake season that’s set to expire at the end of October, the WDFW will be holding a continuous fishing derby. Anglers who catch one of 1,000 green-tagged trout will be eligible to redeem the tag for a prize donated by license vendors. The total value of those prizes is more than $38,000.
In Lewis County, tagged trout will be planted at SoCo Pond, Fort Borst Pond, Carlisle Lake (Ol’ Mill Pond), and Mineral Lake. In Cowlitz County, Lake Sacajawea, Silver Lake, Kress Lake and Horseshoe Lake will all have prize-winning fish to catch. A complete list of lakes with prize fish and details on how to claim prizes is available online at https://fishhunt.dfw.wa.gov/Home/FishingDerby.
