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Oregon Road Conditions & Cams Advertisement Email Story to a Friend June 30, 2005 Fireworks will light up Diamond Lake By MARK FREEMAN Mail Tribune The last, best midsummer time to catch a stringer of trout at Diamond Lake is this weekend as opportunities explode both over and under the water for visitors there. The Diamond Lake Resort plans a stepped-up fireworks display Monday night to cap its Fourth of July celebrations. The extra fireworks will commemorate advancing plans to chemically treat the lake next year to rid it of unwanted tui chubs that have altered the lake’s ecosystem and damaged the trout fishery. "We’ve added a considerable amount to the show," said Steve Koch, the resort’s manager. "You won’t want to miss this one." But perhaps more interesting to anglers was Wednesday’s stocking of 3,000 large rainbow trout that biologists say will temporarily revive the lake’s sagging fishery. Advertisement The newly stocked fish are 12 inches long and average a pound apiece. They are from the Desert Springs Hatchery and cost about $4 apiece, with the money coming from the federal Sport Fish Restoration Program. The trout will provide a jump start to midsummer angling in the high Cascades lake in eastern Douglas County, says Jim Muck, a fisheries biologist with the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife in Roseburg. "After we stock, fishing’s been very good for a week, then catches really drop off," Muck says. "There will be lots of limits the first couple days, then it’ll slow down to what it is now — 0.1 fish per hour." The ODFW’s creel census at the lake shows one trout caught per 10 hours of fishing the week before the stocking, Muck says. The next planned stocking at Diamond Lake is just before the Labor Day weekend. Illegally introduced in the early 1990s, the small, plankton-eating chubs now number in the millions and have altered the ecosystem of the once popular trout-fishing lake. The degradation has reached a point where fingerling trout cannot survive and toxic algae blooms close the lake to recreation at times in the summer. Once Oregon's most popular trout-fishing destination, the lake has seen about a 90-percent drop in visitors from its heyday of more than 100,000 visitor days a year. After an environmental study, the Forest Service has approved a state-proposed plan to draw the lake down and chemically treat it next fall to kill off all the lake’s fish. Plans are then to restock it once the insect population rebounds. The ODFW is conducting pretreatment tests on insect levels this summer. A similar treatment with rotenone and restocking occurred in the 1950s. Reach reporter Mark Freeman at 776-4470, or e-mail Fireworks will light up Diamond 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 Discount Hotel Reservations online casinos news Ashley Furniture HomeStore Send Flowers Southern Oregon Loans California Casinos GMAT Prep Windermere Van Vleet Sports Equipment Online Casino Reviews Online Bingo Entertainment Guide Online Casino Fundraisers Sudoku Online Casinos Canada Online Pharmacy Advertisement s