Toni, What has happened to our favorite trout and kokanee lakes in Pierce county?

Toni: Thanks for the report and short video. The WDFW rainbow stocking report there for 2019 seems rather weak, compared with earlier years. Underwater cameras do give one some sense of how many fish are around, and your video makes the density look quite slim. Who knows why - - - but since WDFW began in 2016 using two net pens tied to the Army dock (rather than one at Bill’s Boathouse) the rainbow catching in the lake has sure gone downhill for me. And the kokanee catching has also dwindled.

In addition to fish stocked from hatcheries, WDFW reported 6000 rainbow released in 2014 and in 2015 from the earlier net pen at Bill’s, and in 2016, 2017, and 2018 an average of 25,000 were released each year from the two new Army pens. The WDFW website does not mention any fish released from the net pens in 2019 - - only hatchery fish.

Do net pen raised rainbow behave differently after release than those stocked directly from a hatchery? I suppose the department doesn’t have any money to try to figure out what’s happening in the lake.

By the way, were any perch caught?

What has happened to our trout and kokanee in our Pierce County lakes? Planting is down on trout. I asked region 6 biologists what happened to kokaneee? The drought was the answer I got back. Personally I would rather have the cutthroat in American than the planted rainbows. They are not has plentifully as they once were.
Another theory is WDFW plants paper fish...

Yes there are perch people are catching, But not me. :)