Trophy Trout?
You must be interested in fishing for Very Large, World Record, Rainbow Trout or you wouldn't have ended up on my page. That's my quest too! Lake Pend Oreille is the home of almost all the IGFA line class records including the World Record 37 pounder caught in 1947 by Wess Hamlet.
These Gerrard strain Rainbow Trout were introduced to the lake in 1942 after several years of failed efforts by the Idaho Sportsman Association, now known as the Lake Pend Oreille Idaho Club.They are also know as "Kamloops" which is a large area in Canada where these Trout came from.
Reportedly a 52 lbs. 2 oz. was caught in Jewel Lake, British Columbia, but these Trout truly came from Gerrard, B.C., Canada, hence the name. They entered the lake in 1942 as six inch fish and by 1946 they were catching fish to 36 pounds! The lake exploded and history was in the making. Through the sixties the lake was a yearly news maker in such magazines as Field & Stream and since then the Lake has become synonymous with record breaking Trout
Why So Big?
These fish feed on small ducks and geese that wander from the shallows onto the main lake in the early spring. We fence off our swimming areas with barbed wire to ensure the safety of small children, and very seldom do we dangle our feet in the water off the end of the docks! Sorry, I fell asleep and was dreaming of catching "REALLY BIG FISH".
Though these Trout start out as small fingerlings and feed on Zooplankton and insects as do most Trout, they quickly grow large enough to eat kokanee, or land locked Sockeye Salmon. This high protein diet turns them into the voracious predator they are.
So at this point you are thinking, kokanee, land locked Sockeye Salmon, Trout eating salmon! This Guide is nuts and I'm not reading any more of this. But wait, let me back track and explain. Many of you know but there are those who don't that eons ago the socky which migrated up rivers to their spawn grounds were blocked from returning to the sea by southward moving glaciers, forcing them to adapt to fresh water, never to leave.
These fish populate many waters of the northwest and are a great game fish in their own right. Unfortunately, they were not in Lake Pend Oreille, at least not until a flood flushed them down the Clark Fork River in the 1920's where they found a home and exploded. By the 1940's to late 50's the lake became a commercial fishery for them, and Smoked Kokanee from this lake could be found on most Railroad dining cars from here to Washington D.C.! Now we have 150 square miles of water full of Kokanee and here comes the Idaho Sportsman Association as I explained earlier (remember?) and off we go.
150sq Miles of Water?
How did all that water get there? A flood. A really really big flood! This lake is 43 miles long and 6 miles wide, most of it is 1000 feet deep and that's not much water compared to the lake that formed it. About 15,000 years ago there was a lake called the Great Lake Missoula and it was held back by an ice dam that extended from Missoula, Montana up into Canada and was between 1,500 and 2,000 feet high.
This lake covered about 1,200 square miles of area and had as much water in it as Lake Huron and Lake Erie combined. That's 500 cubic miles of water, and when that dam broke all the water drained in two days and scoured out this ditch. Just so you realize how much water that is, the Mississippi flood of 1993 ran at 1 million cubic feet per second. This flood was 600 million cubic feet per second!
So, how Do you get yours?
Move here, buy a boat, add $10,000 worth of gear, fish for five years and then get a fishing lesson like some people I've met. Or, call me and make a reservation and hopefully we can fill that spot over your fire place with a memory of a life time.
