I do have a small inflatable kayak. I will probably try to fish the mouth of the river and also the docks at the town of Stehekin for cutthroat trout probably if there is minimal wind. Does my plan sound feasible? Is it possible to catch Cutthroats in shallow water during spring? I think I will just scout out some spots on the river without bringing my rod if I dont feel comfortable about the lake's conditions. I didn't have much hope from the start to be honest xD. This forum is super supportive and thank you to everyone who helped me!
I have fished this lake for over 40 years have rarely, as in count on one hand, caught cutthroat from docs. I have caught them at the mouth of a creek close to spawning. I have caught a lot more along the shore in the shade of trees.
The state of Wa has a hatchery on the Columbia upstream from the outfall that is dedicated to the original lake Chelan Cutthroat. Feds
have another hatchery in Colorado dedicated also to Lake Chelan waters (west Slope) Cutthroat.
In the 1900s, the federal government decided to use Lake Chelan as a Cutthroat breeding lake. They installed weirs on all the tributaries of the lake and yearly would collect virtually all the eggs and milt and use it to populate west slope cutthroat. After a large number of years, they noticed a large drop in the available returning fish. No one said they were rocket Scientists and they proved it. In more recent times, Wa fisheries planted salmon, kings and silvers. the salmon were supposed to grow up, spawn in the tributaries and when the fry hatched, they would enter the lawn, swim down to the end of the lake at chelan and then go down stream to the Columbia and then to the Pacific ocean. Seems the silvers followed orders but the Chinook decided to hang around and began spawning in The Stehekin River. So now we had reident king salmon.
Then a dipstick from washing fish and game planted Lake trout. It was common knowledge what had happened in Yellowstone Lake and what happenned to the resident fish which coincidentally were Cutthroat Trout.
The resident fish in the lake Chelan were rainbows, cutthroat and Kokanee which are offspring of landlocked Sockeye salmon and also freshwater burbot. The Lake trout were devouring the locals and still are. But we are not done. Our fisheries folks decided to plant Mysis shrimp as a feed source for kokanee and their fry. There were 5 or 6 lakes in Idaho and Washington that planted shrimp. warm water lakes and Chelan is definitely not one, the shrimp did prosper. In cold water lakes like chelan the shrimp lived but their main food source a certain plankton that the kokanee fry normally fed on for their first rew weeks of life. So now we have a much diminished Kokanee numbers. All from the minds of our paid experts
The hatchery in Colorado is an attempt to right federal errors.
A bunch got cutoff. I will put it back shortly.