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Mark Freeman Commentary Big trout pack area lakes Photo by Jim Craven This fat and colorful rainbow trout was raised at the Desert Springs Trout Farm in Summer Lake. Fish, Emigrant stocked with 5-pounders By MARK FREEMAN They are plump and translucent, with the splashy reds and gun-metal blues that make rainbow trout perhaps nature's best brush with living watercolors. They range from 16 to 21 inches long, are shaped like footballs and are the most anticipated Summer Lake transplants since the last winter goose crossed the Cascade crest in a cooler last January. And at $2.49 cents per pound, they might also be the most expensive. Yet these special rainbow trout are clearly the most popular attraction to hit Southern Oregon waters this week. Saturday is the start of the spring trout-fishing season, and the buzz among area anglers are the thousands of 2-pound trout, reared at a private Summer Lake hatchery and planted recently in two Southern Oregon lakes. But these $5 fish won't be found at Diamond, Hyatt, Howard Prairie or other popular Opening Day haunts. The rainbows are the new features at Fish and Emigrant lakes, where the recent state purchase of these big trout are piquing the interest of area anglers who readily admit that size does matter. "I don't have to explain that bigger is better. We all know that," says McCauley Jones, a Medford angler who likely will forgo Howard Prairie on Saturday in favor of Fish Lake. "I've never fished at Fish Lake," he says. "But put a bunch of big fish in there, and I'm there." And Jones very well may have company. The Desert Springs Trout Farm, which is getting paid roughly $5 apiece for the trout by the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife, trucked and released about 2,500 into Fish Lake this past week in time for Saturday's festivities. Howard Prairie Lake is normally Ground Zero for local Opening Day fishing activities -- the trout anglers' version of the Earth Day celebration this year. Howard Prairie, Diamond and Hyatt lakes all sport their own contingent of big trout that grew up in the lake and are no less worthy of attention than the recent immigrants. Yet it will be hard for some fishermen to ignore 5,000 pounds of fresh fish finning around the Fish Lake Resort. "Putting those trout in Fish Lake may take a little pressure off Howard Prairie and Hyatt lakes on opening weekend," says Mike Evenson, a biologist with ODFW. Ironically, Fish Lake, off Highway 140 east of Medford, and Emigrant Lake near Ashland are both open year-round. Therefore, people can catch and keep their legal complements of these big trout today and Friday if they are so inclined. Bill and Shane Grey, a father-son duo from the Seattle area who are in Central Point this week visiting relatives, were two of about a dozen anglers who met the stocking trucks Wednesday at Fish Lake. They both caught trout just minutes after their liberation. "Oh, Doggie," says Shane, 5. "Look at all those fish." Within minutes, he had caught more big Oregon trout than many Opening Day veterans. Saturday likely will be even more like a fishing festival at Fish Lake. The Emigrant and Fish lake stockings are the first under a new program in which the ODFW turns to private hatcheries to supply 10 percent of its annual complement of hatchery trout. The change comes at the behest of the Oregon Legislature, which in 1999 passed a law directing the trout purchases for five years, during which time the cost-effectiveness will be studied. The ODFW went fishing for bids and hooked up with the Desert Springs Trout Farm in Lakeview. This farm has been raising big trout for more than 20 years, but most of the market heretofore has been in the lakes and private ponds of Northern California. The farm raises about 300,000 trout a year, and maybe 25,000 of them go to private farm ponds and reservoirs in Oregon as well as "you-catch-'em" facilities where patrons pay a fee to fish in stocked waters. The trout come from eggs taken from brood trout in Washington and are raised much like trout at Cole Rivers Hatchery -- fed food pellets in large ponds of relatively warm water until they reach the target size. Instead of buying a large batch of 8-inch "legal-size" trout much like the state-run hatcheries raise, the ODFW bought big batches of bigger trout from Desert Springs -- trout averaging 2 pounds. These trout are reared about two years at the hatchery before release -- at about twice the time and expense of ODFW-raised trout. The first 2,500 of these trout went into Emigrant Lake on March 31. Another 820 went to Fish Lake on Monday and 1,680 more into Fish Lake on Wednesday. Applegate Lake is set to get the final 3,000 of them next month. The agency will be watching whether these fish generate enough warm-fuzzies among fishermen to be considered worth the expense. "It gives us an opportunity to try the cost-effectiveness of stocking a bigger fish and gauging the anglers' response to this," says Doug DeHart, the ODFW's chief of fisheries. "Not that we're not capable of raising the bigger fish ourselves," DeHart says. In fact, the positive attention drawn to these new trout are rubbing some of the ODFW's own trout-makers the wrong way. "It's certainly true that this was a change that was directed by the Legislature," DeHart says. "No one likes to have their program changed. "There's a good deal of sensitivity there," DeHart says. Cole Rivers Hatchery workers have recently stocked excess adult winter steelhead in Applegate Lake and regularly have spread big trout across the region when they are available. But like it or not, the new trout in town is what's turning anglers' heads this week. "After an Easter Egg hunt Saturday, we'll be right back up here," Bill Grey says. "We were going to go to Howard Prairie. But this looks better." (Staff writer Mark Freeman covers the outdoors for the Mail Tribune. Call him at 776-4470, or e-mail him at: [email protected] ) Outdoor Journal Today's Edition : News | Sports | Business | Weather | Tempo | Classifieds Mail Tribune Mail Tribune � 2000 -- Medford, Oregon USA