Klineline Pond and Battle Ground Lake each have been stocked with 3,000 rainbow trout, which is about the closest thing there is to good news in local angling.
The sturgeon retention fishery in the pools of the Columbia Gorge is bad. State biologists estimated just two dozen legal sturgeon were taken in the first 10 days of January in Bonneville pool.
Four winter steelhead were recovered in the five days the fish separator operated at Cowlitz Salmon Hatchery.
Streamflows on Wednesday afternoon were 3,540 cubic feet per second in the East Fork of the Lewis, 6,000 in the Washougal and 11,000 in the North Fork of the Lewis at Ariel. All those numbers are too high for effective steelhead fishing, especially the East Fork and the Washougal.
The Cowlitz River at Mayfield Dam was 9,600 cubic feet per second, which is low enough for meaningful angling.
Angler checks by the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife:
East Fork Lewis — Thirty bank rods with one wild steelhead released.
Kalama — Fifty-two bank rods with one hatchery steelhead kept, one hatchery steelhead released and one wild steelhead released; 10 boaters with no catch.
Coweeman — Eleven bank rods with one wild steelhead released.
Mid-Columbia — Bonneville pool, 18 bank rods with eight sublegal sturgeon released; 43 boaters with two legal sturgeon kept plus two oversize and 135 sublegals released; five boaters with no walleye.
• The Dalles pool, 32 boaters with two legal sturgeon kept plus three oversize and 17 sublegals released; seven bank rods with three sublegals released.
• John Day pool, 28 boaters with one sturgeon kept plus two oversize and three sublegals released; 14 boaters with one walleye kept; 10 boaters with one steelhead kept and two released.
