Trout fishing at Lake Spokane will improve with the stocking of 155,000 catchable-size rainbow trout now under way – the start of a 10-year agreement between the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife (WDFW) and Avista, the Spokane-based energy utility.

Lake Spokane, sometimes called Long Lake, is the Spokane River reservoir just west of the city of Spokane, created by Avista’s Long Lake Hydroelectric Development. Avista and the state of Washington have long worked together on fishery enhancement.

Lake Spokane has long been popular with anglers for bass, crappie and perch. The annual stocking over the next 10 years of 155,000 rainbow trout, each about 8 inches long and expected to grow bigger quickly, should boost what has been only a fair trout fishery.

The trout, from WDFW’s Spokane Fish Hatchery and Trout Lodge, Inc. in Soap Lake, are sterile so they cannot reproduce with native fish in the river system. They are marked with clipped adipose fins for ease of monitoring harvest through creel surveys that will begin in 2016.

WDFW district fish biologist Randy Osborne and Avista Environmental Specialist Tim Vore thank members of the Spokane Fly Fishers and Inland Empire Fly Fishing clubs for volunteering time to the trout stocking program.

“Avista has long been providing public fishing and boating opportunities,” said Vore, “but this is an excellent new opportunity to fish and enjoy Lake Spokane.”

Osborne says anglers can expect the trout to be down in the cooler water of the reservoir this summer, and therefore more conducive to boat fishing. But this fall and next spring, when the stocked trout are bigger, casting near the surface off of the docks or public shorelines will also be productive.

Lake Spokane’s fishing opportunities and regulations are available online.