Northwest Fishing Reports

We had a good day ice fishing at Curlew lake last weekend catching mainly trout. It seems we may have been a little deep for the perch as we only caught one. For the most part the trout we caught were healthy beautiful fish but a few of them had lice on them. One was covered in them. It's was kind of eire looking and I got a little apprehensive even touching the fish to unhook and release it. Any ideas on what causes this to happen?

They're copepods and nothing to worry about. Usually caused from stress of changing water temperature. See it most frequently in spring, especially if water temps rise quickly.

Thanks for the reply. They sure were ugly little critters. Kind of looked like instant rice stuck on the fish

They are ugly and although I wouldn't hesitate to retain a rainbow with a few, I would release any with a heavy infestation simply because that fish would be heavily stressed and unlikely to be good table fare.