FISHING: Preserve Priest Lake

The fishing story by Nick Rotunno in your Feb. 3 paper caught my attention. In that story, Jim Fredericks of IDFG is quoted as saying that "Lake trout pose a serious threat to the Lake Pend Oreille fishery. As they've done at Priest Lake and Flathead Lake in northwest Montana, they can quickly overpopulate and destroy the forage base."

The solution to this problem, in most lakes (including Yellowstone Lake in Wyoming) seems almost universally to be to get rid of the lake trout by whatever means necessary in order to preserve and protect the native - or more native - species, such as rainbows and Kokanee.

Priest Lake was once one of the most productive cutthroat and Kokanee fisheries in the region. Ned Horner (IDFG Ret.) used to tell me that the cutthroat at Priest Lake had been there for more than 7 million years and he was determined to protect them. Many remember commercial fishing for Kokanee at Priest Lake in the 1960s.

So, my question is simply this: when and by what authority did someone decide to just let Priest Lake be written off? Who determined that the cutthroats and kokanees and bull trout could all be allowed to disappear from the lake, while we work on fixing this lake trout problem that man has created in all the other big lakes?

This is just not an issue that can be ignored by Fish and Game. If you agree, I urge you to contact them.

CAMERON PHILLIPS

Coeur d'Alene