Click on photo for full image

An Interview with John Weinheimer, Region 5 Inland Fish Coordinator I've been with the agency for 17 years. I graduated from Western Washington University in 1980 with a bachelor of science in biology. I'm married, my wife's name is Delia. We have three daughters, Emily, Caroline and Alice. We live in Carson which is in the Columbia River Gorge in Skamania County. We've lived there since 1985. I worked as an area fish biologist for the former state Department of Wildlife starting in 1987. I then moved into a district fish biologist position with the Department of Fish and Wildlife in Region 5 (the Vancouver area). I am in charge of the Inland Fish Program for Region 5.

Q: WDFW plants millions of trout every year. What is the goal? What's the department trying to do? A: The goal is to try and provide as much family recreation as we can with our trout program. In it, we rely pretty heavily on that put-and-take fishery. It enables us to put fish out in local areas and provide fishing for a lot of heavy pressure. But it is a fishery that is close to many peoples' homes. It's in peoples' back yards or in their downtown public parks. Another important thing about planting catchable-sized trout, in the 9-inch range, in lowland lakes is that fishers don't have to invest a lot of money to participate. And you don't have to invest a lot of time. Here in western Washington you have a lot of real fine trout fishing opportunity without having to make the commitment to take an entire weekend or perhaps a weeks worth of vacation to go do it. And, if you're enjoying yourself, you have the opportunity to go back during the week or perhaps another weekend. Q: You mentioned lowland lakes. Are they the only places WDFW trout are planted? A: No, I can't speak for the entire state but I can speak for Region 5 in terms of our trout fishing opportunities. We are really, really diverse in terms of what we do with our hatchery program and what we do with wild production. We've got our lowland lake program. We've got reservoirs in which we plant fish and we've got high lakes, meaning lakes that you have to hike to, such as in wilderness areas, or high mountain lakes to which anglers can drive for a lot of recreational opportunity. Trout are planted all over the place. And that means a lot of diverse opportunity with a lot of different types of regulations of which anglers must be aware. Q: Some of those plantings are fairly unique aren't they? They use airplanes and people hike them up? A: In order to do our trout program we use a variety of methods for planting fish. We rely on volunteers. There are lots of clubs and organizations that help us do our plants. Everything from groups that are committed to planting high lakes to horse groups, to Boy Scout troops. We also do a lot of our plants by helicopter and by airplane to get fish into high mountain lakes. Q: How do you decide which lakes to plant? And which lakes get the catchables and which lakes get the fry? A: It's the monitoring that we do that determines on what kind of fish program we're going to do in a lake. We do biological sampling, creel censuses, ask volunteers to keep and turn in diaries of what they catch and things like that. We'll go in and look and see what we planted in a lake, what kind of survival we've gotten from the plants. See what's working and what's not working. And then make changes based on what we have available. The amount of available money also determines whether fish will be planted as fingerlings or raised to catchable size. Q: In other words, if you put them in lake as a fingerling you've saved a lot of money because you haven't raised them as long? A: That's correct, you're using the ability of the lake to grow the fish when you can. But a lot of our waters contain other species of fish, some of which aren't very desirable when you are trying to manage a trout-only water. Species such as bass and bluegill can out-compete a fry or a fingerling trout in which case we have to go to a catchable trout program in order to have fish for people to catch. Q: You yourself call it a put-and-take operation. Is that the case, that WDFW trout that are put into a lake or reservoir are taken as fast as they planted? Or do some learn to be fairly tough to catch? A: I would tell you that when we plant fish that are of a catchable size most of the time what we are doing is trying to provide fish to be caught that same season and at a very high catch rate. However, when planting fry and fingerling trout into a water more often than not we're hoping those fish will carryover a couple years and provide years of recreation. So it depends on the circumstances in terms of what we're trying to get out of those fish. Q: A hatchery raised trout can be good target of a fairly sophisticated angler, can't it? A: That's correct. We can manage a lake for that kind of fishing. For instance, take some of the brown trout that we plant out as catchables. After one of those fish has been caught and released, it can be extremely difficult to catch again. Just ask any angler about that. Those brown trout can grow to a terrific size. They can survive well and last for years. Mineral Lake in Cowlitz County would be an example of that. It's an extremely popular fly fishing-only water. We've got brown trout in there that will go several pounds. Most of those fish started out at a catchable 8 - 10 inch size and it's not uncommon to catch those fish well over 18 inches. Q: Often in relation to planting trout you hear about the department rehabilitating lakes. What's that all about? A: Rehabilitating a lake means we've gone in removed the unwanted fish. Mineral Lake in Lewis County would be an example of that. Mineral Lake is probably our finest fingerling trout water in southwest Washington. It has an historically popular rainbow trout fishery for the opener and we have rehabilitated that lake, meaning we've treated it with rotenone to get rid of the unwanted fish. We don't want to manage that lake as a warmwater lake, meaning it contains bass, perch and those type of fish. Somebody will put those warmwater species in a lake and then we lose the ability to plant fingerlings and produce a good trout fishery. And so we go back in there and apply rotenone to the water and get rid of those warmwater fish and start it over. It's something that we do quite a bit in eastern Washington. We're doing it less and less in western Washington. Q: That's a problem for managing fisheries, particularly trout fisheries, when people decide on their own to bring in bass or northern pike, isn't it? A: Yes, it's really frustrating because the decision is being made by the few for everybody. One person illegally planting fish can ruin a very, very popular trout water. We try hard, I think, in the state to provide a diversity of opportunity whether it be trout or warmwater fish. We managers designate some waters for trout and others for other species and it takes only one person to cost the anglers of this state a lot of money and recreational opportunity lost. Q: If you put a few bass or other warmwater species into a lake pretty soon you have a whole bunch of that species? A: Another thing you see typically is that somebody will come in and plant a few fish out of a bucket, perhaps bluegill, bass or perch that they've caught somewhere else. More often than not those populations quickly become unbalanced. And what I mean by that is you end up with stunted fish, perhaps bass or bluegill, that are not of a desirable size for anybody who wants to catch them. And then you end up with a mess. Q: How does stunting occur? A: To get balanced populations you have to plant fish in certain numbers, at the right sizes and at the right times of year. So that perhaps a bluegill population will be the main prey base for a predator like largemouth bass. What happens is that if those numbers aren't put in at the right times and right numbers you get an explosion of bluegill that the bass can't keep up with and so you ended up with a bunch of bluegill that are of a size that nobody wants to keep. Q: Do trout plants threaten fish stocks protected by the Endangered Species Act? A: There's two points that I'd like to make in answer to that question. They can pose a risk in terms of putting them in places where they can out-compete or perhaps prey on fish that we're trying to protect. But, on the other hand, planted trout can become a prey base for wild species in trouble. For example, we plant approximately 600,000 fingerling rainbow into Swift Reservoir in Skamania County every year. The work I've done up there since 1988 has shown me that those fingerling rainbow that we plant are a major prey for our wild bull trout that are using that reservoir. Not only are those rainbows providing a recreational opportunity for sports people but they also are providing a good diet source for those bull trout and we're working hard to get those fish recovered. It's working. Q: So obviously it can be good or bad, is the department is careful about putting hatchery trout into a lake where they would pose a threat to a wild salmon or trout species? A: That's correct. We're trying to minimize those risks and I'd like to say that the state Wild Salmonid Policy has given us some real pluses for the resident trout program. Because of the Wild Salmonid Policy, in the last couple years we have taken excess adult steelhead and sea- run cutthroat from our local hatcheries down in southwest Washington and planted them into our local lakes to supplement our catchable trout program. What that means to is that you can go down to a water like Klineline Pond in Clark County during the winter time and not know what you are going to catch: An 8- or- 10 inch trout or on up to an 18-pound steelhead. So it's worked out really well for us. We've taken advantage of a situation where we're trying to protect wild stocks but it's given us an opportunity to provide additional fishing opportunity in our lakes.