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Oregon Road Conditions & Cams Email Story to a Friend April 20, 2006 Surplus of trout find home in Agate Lake By MARK FREEMAN Mail Tribune WHITE CITY — Bountiful panfish and no-motors rule make Agate Lake a pleasant spring stop for bass and crappie anglers looking for a quiet May day spent angling. But this lake off Highway 140 could be on trout anglers’ radar screens during opening weekend now that the crappie and bluegill have 5,000 trout as their new neighbors. Faced with excess trout on hand at Cole Rivers Hatchery, Agate Lake on Monday received perhaps the first stocking of legal-sized rainbow trout in decades. That release of 8-10 inch trout will be repeated in May when 5,000 more rainbows will be released at Agate Lake, which is off Meridian Road southeast of the Stone Ridge Golf Course. "Agate’s one we normally manage for warmwater fish, but since we have extra fish, we stuck some in there this spring," said David Haight, an Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife biologist in Central Point. Advertisement "Since it’s close to Medford, we thought here’s a chance to get some trout fishing close to the valley floor before the warmwater fishing gets going," Haight said. In the past, Agate Lake has been an occasional dumping grounds of sorts for excess Cole Rivers Hatchery fish, usually receiving infant salmon or steelhead that didn’t meet the quality required for release into local rivers as smolts. "Those might be fun to catch, but they’re not like a beautiful rainbow trout," hatchery Assistant Manager David Pease said. "As far as rainbow go, this is these actually are the first decent fish we’ve put in there." The excess fish are a silk-purse story spun by Cole Rivers Hatchery managers in response to the discovery of a naturally occurring virus called IHN in rainbow trout at the hatchery last year. IHN virus is naturally occurring, attacking the kidneys of young trout and salmon. It is passed among fish through the water, and it’s most deadly to trout and salmon in their infant stages. IHN is strictly a fish disease, and it has no impact on humans, birds or other warm-blooded animals who ingest the fish or are exposed to the water. The ODFW has a policy of not stocking fish possibly exposed to IHN in waters upstream of any working hatchery’s water intakes. That meant about 137,000 legal-sized trout raised annually at Cole Rivers for release in Lost Creek Lake, Willow Lake, Medco Pond and the upper Rogue River near Prospect could not go there. Cole Rivers’ staff looked elsewhere to stock those lakes. Hatchery workers wheeled and dealed to exchange Cole Rivers’ IHN trout to release in "IHN-hot" lakes in the Willamette Valley for IHN-free trout at Willamette Hatchery while skimming excess fish from other hatcheries. The result was that Cole Rivers amassed more than 81,000 excess legal-sized trout for release this year, Pease said. Along with the Agate Lake trout, many of the extra trout will be stocked throughout the spring in Howard Prairie and Hyatt lakes as well as Whetstone, Burma and Dutch Herman ponds — all of which regularly receive catchable trout, Pease said. About 23,000 are targeted for several south coast water bodies, Pease said. Another 4,400 will be stocked next year at Lake Selmac and 7,000 remain unallocated, he said. Haight said he expects most of Agate’s trout to be caught this year, once word of the stocking spreads. In late summer, Agate Lake normally gets so warm it becomes marginal for trout survival, Haight said. But it is deep enough that some could survive until next year. Agate Lake has no special angling regulations so it does not appear in the 2006 Oregon Sport Fishing Regulations booklet. The lake, therefore, falls under the regular regional trout limit of five trout at least 8 inches long per day, and only one of them can be longer than 20 inches. However, the Oregon State Marine Board has limited Agate Lake’s boat traffic to motorless craft or those with electric motors. Reach reporter Mark Freeman at 776-4470, or e-mail Surplus of trout find home in Agate Lake ">[email protected] . Mail Tribune Home | Local News | Sports | Business | Obituaries | Life | Opinion AP News | Archives | Site Map | Community | Classified Copyright © 1997-2006 Mail Tribune, Inc. All rights reserved. Privacy Policy | Terms & Conditions | Website Feedback www.bingo.com Home Security Systems Trunks, Footlocker Custom Build Computers Computer Security Discount Hotel Reservations online casinos news Send Flowers California Casinos GMAT Prep Windermere Van Vleet Deep Muscle Stimulator Sports Equipment Online Casino Reviews Online Bingo Entertainment Guide Online Casino Fundraisers Sudoku Online Casinos Canada Email Security Advertisement s