No doubt about it, salmon and salmon fishing were the two biggest news story of 2013 for Northwest sportsmen as a whole.
A record run of upriver brights led to smokin’ hot action in the Columbia everywhere from Buoy 10 to the Hanford Reach, where managers practically tossed out the regs pamphlet — two-polin’ and three-adult-king limits!! — while Puget Sound pinks and coho came in pretty thick too.
PREFISHING FOR THE BIG NORTHWEST SPORTFISHING INDUSTRY ASSOCIATION DERBY, NORTHWEST SPORTSMAN CONTRIBUTOR TERRY OTTO TIED INTO THIS 28-POUND BRIGHT AT BUOY 10. HE WAS FISHING WITH FELLOW NORTHWEST SPORTSMAN PEN BUZZ RAMSEY. (BUZZ RAMSEY)
And the future of the fish looks brighter still as salmon began colonizing new waters.
This fall, three years after dam removal on the famed Southwest Oregon river, sections of the Rogue went from stillwater to spawning grounds “alive with fish,” the Olympic Peninsula’s similarly half-unshackled Elwha saw its largest return of Chinook in over two decades, the Snake run past Ice Harbor Dam was the best since the plug went in in 1962, and the early forecasts for 2014 Columbia spring and fall Chinook look very good — what could be the fifth largest run of the former and a similar-to-2013 return of the latter are predicted!
2013 COLUMBIA FALL CHINOOK RUN BY THE NUMBERS
1,200,000-plus Estimated fall Chinook run size at the mouth of the river
952,944 Final passage at Bonneville Dam
253,575 Sept. 7-11 king count at the dam, a period which included the first, second, third, sixth and seventh largest single-day tallies back to 1938
63,870 Record daily fall Chinook count at Bonneville, set Sept. 9
30,306 Record daily fall Chinook count at McNary Dam, set Sept. 22
29,307 Aug. 1-Sept. 22 king catch in Columbia between Buoy 10 and Bonneville, 1,000 more than old record
23,332 Estimated upriver bright catch in the Hanford Reach, 10,000 more than old record
Meanwhile, Washington fishery overseers followed the lead of managers to the south when in January they approved reformation of salmon allocation and rules on the Columbia, including a ban on barbed hooks. And this fall, Oregon’s fish commission approved a new $9.75 fee for anglers trying to catch salmon (as well as sturgeon and steelhead) in the Beaver State’s side of the watershed.
NORTHWEST SPORTSMAN’s 2013 COVERS — KINDA NAILED IT WITH THE AUGUST (SECOND ROW, FAR RIGHT).
Wildlife also made the news. A gnarled ol’ 9×10 muley and another whopper buck were harvested in far Eastern Washington and deer hunting was good in the Okanogan and improved in the Colville, Pend Oreille and Upper Columbia River Valleys.
Speaking of flagtails, the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service moved a number of the endangered brand from one Lower Columbia refuge to another to keep them from drowning should an imperiled dike bust. More translocations are set to occur this year.
USFWS MOVED A NUMBER OF COLUMBIAN WHITETAIL DEER FROM JULIA BUTLER-HANSEN NWR TO RIDGEFIELD NWR. (USFWS)
To the south of the river, the pronghorn herd fenced in at the former Umatilla chemical weapons depot for over 40 years was set free to run wild in Southeast Oregon …
A HELICOPTER HERDS THE UMATILLA CHEMICAL DEPOT’S PRONGHORN HERD INTO AN ENCLOSURE. (ODFW)
… and in another helicopter-aided operation, we learned that federal sharpshooters were going Apocalypse Now on Central Oregon’s unwanted feral pig population.
WDFW began another investigation into why elk in Southwest Washington are suffering from hoof issues – preliminary results remain inconclusive and the E-word, euthanization, has been brought up as a means to stop the inexorable spread — while also taking out the Tieton bighorn herd to keep sheep pneumonia from spreading to nearby groups.
AN IMAGE FROM A WDFW WEEKLY REPORT SHOWS ONE OF THE VICTIMS OF THE LATEST PNEUMONIA OUTBREAK IN YAKIMA COUNTY. (WDFW)
Last year was a good one for new access to Northwest woods and waters. New marshes were cleared for waterfowling in Oregon and access to upper John Day elk hunting grounds was secured while Washington purchased a massive block of land in Kittitas County and several thousand acres in both Yakima and Asotin Counties for recreation.
ONE OF SEVERAL VALLEYS CUTTING THROUGH THE 4-O RANCH ABOVE THE GRANDE RONDE IN ASOTIN COUNTY. WDFW IS BUYING THE 12,000-ACRE PROPERTY FROM A LANDOWNER WHO APPROACHED THEM WILLING TO MAKE A DEAL. (WDFW)
But in a troubling development, one of the region’s largest landowners, Weyerhaeuser — holder of 2 percent of all the real estate in Washington alone — went to permit-only entry for most of two of its biggest, most productive-for-hunting tree farms, Vail and Pe Ell.
GAME MANAGERS AND HUNTERS ARE CONCERNED ABOUT THE TREND AMONG FOREST OWNERS OF LEASING THEIR LANDS OR GOING TO FEE ACCESS TO A SET NUMBER OF PERMITTEES. NORTHWEST SPORTSMAN COVERED THE ISSUE OVER THE SUMMER.
Here’s a look at what else made headlines in Northwest fishing and hunting in 2013.
ON THE WOLF FRONT, there was remarkably little howling — at least compared to 2012′s festivities.
Whenever I pestered them for updates, Washington wildlife managers, biologists, spokesmen, fish and wildlife officers, janitors, groundskeepers — heck, anyone I could reach in the agency — had a stock two-word answer for me: “All’s quiet.”
Maybe that was the script from the honchos for dealing with pesky reporters from The Daily Howler, or maybe just the yin and yang of managing Canis lupus over time, but everyone involved — WDFW, ranchers, wolf lovers, etc. — breathed a little easier compared to what happened with the Wedge Pack the year before.
In a moment of levity late in the year, WDFW director Phil Anderson said, “I can admit, as we went through July, August and September, almost dreading if (wolf manager) Donny (Martorello) was coming toward me what he might have to say to me.”
But there was wolf news, of course, starting with the wanderings of the Smackout boys, one of which waltzed all the way into British Columbia’s Coast Range, threatening to shack up with those pure-bred, salmon-eating wolves of the northwestern Canadian coast and endanger their colonization of Washington.
(WDFW)
Well to the south OR7 returned from California to the Beaver State, staying in the south Cascades.
We reported on a unique study that began last winter in North-central Washington where a researcher attached camera collars to a number of deer in hopes of figuring out how the ungulates behave around wolves, and what the impact of that may be.
IMAGES RECORDED BY SMALL CAMERAS MOUNTED TO THE NECKS OF A COUPLE DOZEN DEER IN NORTH-CENTRAL WASHINGTON ARE PROVIDING A GLIMPSE INTO THE DAILY LIVES OF THE ANIMALS, AND HOPEFULLY MORE DETAILS ABOUT THEIR INTERACTIONS WITH WOLVES AND THAT IMPACT. (IMAGES COURTESY JUSTIN DELLINGER)
Oregon managers estimated that, going into the year, there were just under 50 wolves in their state while Washington wolf biologists said 50 for sure and maybe as many as 100.
Those numbers are sure to rise when 2013′s year-end counts come out, though perhaps not as much as the previous year’s rapid growth suggested. Only one new pack in Washington was confirmed publicly (there were mutterings that Ruby was a pack and that the Smackouts had splintered into multiple new groups) while Oregon saw a new one at Mt. Emily. But at least half of Washington’s and almost all of Oregon’s packs had pups last year, putting both states closer to recovery goals.
SEVERAL YEARS AFTER BEING SHOT TO BITS BY POACHERS AND SETTING BACK REACHING MEETING MINIMUM STATE RECOVERY GOALS FOR THE ZONE, THE LOOKOUT PACK PRODUCED A LITTER OF THREE PUPS IN 2013. (WDFW)
Wolf incidents occurred all over the map.
Tracks were confirmed in a seemingly odd place, the wheaty Palouse-Scablands of Eastern Washington.
A wolf was whacked by a car on Blewett Pass.
Another was killed by a hunter in the Pasayten Wilderness under circumstances that may have been self-defense (or not, but federal prosecutors haven’t made any announcements).
Three were incidentally trapped in Northeast Oregon by, err, trappers.
Some sort of devil dog chased cars at Corbett, Ore.
What looked kinda like a wolf but was most likely a black-phase red fox was photographed in the woods west of Yakima.
And in a bit of irony, a man convicted of killing wolves in the Methow Valley lost a calf to … a coyote, investigators determined.
There was angst about a new pack on ranchlands just above Wenatchee (it subsequently disappeared) and the resolution of angst with a court settlement on when to take out depredating wolves in Oregon (more incidents required, though ranchers now don’t need a state permit to take out offending animals under certain circumstances).
Meanwhile, range riders kept their eyes on the herd and did a pretty good job of keeping woofs (the Northeast Washington pernunciation) out of the cattle this year.
Perhaps the biggest news was the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service’s decision to propose delisting wolves in the western two-thirds of both states (and not create a new recovery zone in the Cascades and Coast Ranges), a move that will put management in ODFW’s and WDFW’s courts and allow for full implementation of their conservation plans, but also opposed by numerous advocacy groups, some of which arm-wrestled with WDFW over codifying parts of its wolf plan before dropping a lawsuit.
Meanwhile, the Colville Tribes quietly opened a second hunting season, and quieter still, the Spokane Tribe killed one, maybe two wolves, one of which had been radio-collared on their reservation just a few months before.
Ahh, the power of politics over biology.
SPEAKING OF THE TRIBES, IN THIS THE 39TH YEAR SINCE BOLDT, issues were hot in Washington. The comanagers took forever to come to agreements on when to put nontribal and tribal salmon fishermen on the Skokomish and Puyallup Rivers last summer.
Meanwhile, the Skokomish sued the state about whether hunting and gathering rights extend to private timberlands.
And the tribe found itself buoy-deep in an unexpected bounty of chum, and then, when they couldn’t handle all the fish, many were dumped on the banks of the Skokomish River, which caught the eye of nontribal anglers. Tribal regs prevented the salmon and their rich marine nutrients from being scattered back into the water (the fish were to be composted), but the sight of all those carcasses — the females’ stripped of just their eggs — was sickening.
SPEAKING OF SICKENING, POACHERS CONTINUED TO TAKE A TOLL on Northwest fish and game, including 242 Lahontan cutthroat trout illegally gillnetted at Lake Lenore during the spring spawn. Four men pled guilty to that and received a deserving sentence from a county court.
But that message may not have been heard by all of their comrades. In late fall a quartet allegedly netted over six dozen whitefish out of a nearby reservoir. One of the men was charged with second degree assault for trying to run down a game warden and could face as much as 10 years in jail and or $20,000 in fines if convicted, according to one high-ranking officer.
Judging by international IP addresses clicking on our blog, that part of the message may have been heard a little more widely, but lemme restate it even more clearly: Keep your damned illegal gillnets out of our waters.
In Okanogan County to the north, a man faces 33 charges of big game violations after whopper bucks began dropping last fall and winter and then turning up on his Facebook page, including one post in which he holds a 3-plus-pointer at night and wears a T-shirt reading “Damn I’m good.”
That caught the eye of local hunters who recognized the deer, dubbed the Pitchfork buck, as one they’d photographed earlier in the season, and helped officers eventually crack the case.
FACEBOOK POST MADE BY GARETT ELSBERG AFTER WDFW OFFICERS BELIEVE HE KILLED THE PITCHFORK BUCK. (FACEBOOK)
Speaking of social media taking down poachers, a Western Washington man helped state and tribal officers when he inexplicably posted a video of two canoeloads of whooping men and a woman or two paddling down a blacktail buck in southern Puget Sound before two men dove in and one slit its throat. We understand that the local prosecutor’s office has received charges from WDFW and is currently mulling them.
Front-runner for fine of the year had to have been Josh Burnham, who was convicted in October of killing a 7×7 bull on closed lands near Toledo, Ore., the previous year, winning him a bill for $16,800 in restitution and fines as well as 10 days in jail.
(OSP)
BY THE NUMBERS: Some of 2013′s top blogs on nwsportsmanmag.com
33 Charges Filed Against Tribal Man In Okanogan Trophy Buck Poaching Case; Atty Says Client Not Guilty
2013 Oregon Deer, Elk Hunting Forecasts
Men Who Catch Albies With Pink Barbie Rods
Wardens Nab Netters With 242 Lenore Lahontans
A Truck Driver’s Tanker Buck
Columbia River Getting Its Freak Fish On: Another Striper, First Pink
WITH MORE AND MORE NORTHWEST SPORTSMEN jumping into social media — who doesn’t have a personal and a group page these days? — state agencies waded deeper and deeper into the online world as well.
WDFW tested new ways for getting its messages out. Early in the year it created a series of logos and held a contest to decide which should be the face of its campaign to better pimp the state’s fishing.
In fall, it broke with the tradition of seemingly being too PC to mention the hunting opportunities in Washington to put out positive press releases before the rifle deer and elk openers.
And WDFW reached out to hunters about wolves in a new way: answering their questions during a video conference with experts from Montana and Idaho. Archived to YouTube, it has been viewed 1,600 times.
Also on the video front, after inserting an unusual line into the fishing regs — “Salmon fishery may reopen pending an evaluation of angler behavior, regulation compliance, littering, and trespassing” — WDFW posted a 3-minute instructional/warning about how to keep the Samish open for Chinook in late summer.
Six other videos the agency produced were much less stern, and focused on fly fishing for tiger muskies, spring bass tactics, coho trolling techniques, winter and spring trout fishing, etc.
Meanwhile, ODFW completed Google Mapping 349 trout waters throughout Oregon, spotlighting lakes and streams where it releases hatchery trout.
And they’re working on an app for anglers that will give them real-time regs for the waters they’re on.
But with 3-D printing yet to be readily available to the masses, ODFW turned to the yee olde post office to mail out several thousand bottomfish descenders to salty dogs in hopes of saving more canary and yelloweye rockfish from baraotrauma by making it easier to return the off-limits fish to the depths.
ODFW EMPLOYEES SHOW OFF THE FREE BOTTOMFISH DESCENDERS. (ODFW)
ANGLERS THEMSELVES USED SOCIAL NETWORKS TO ORGANIZE RALLIES, including one to try and reopen one of Washington’s most hallowed steelhead fisheries, now closed in late winter and early spring to help threatened wild fish recover.
In April about 80 or so turned out for “Occupy Skagit” at the Howard Miller Steelhead Park takeout, casting hookless lines in the water (one drift boat reputedly had a couple takedowns on naked plugs), but it’s unlikely the river or its trib, the Sauk, will be reopened any time soon because there’s no management plan in place to allow such a fishery.
“We could have a forecast of 40,000 steelhead and still not have one,” the local biologist has told me on more than one occasion.
And whether NMFS would even allow one to proceed is a whole ‘nuther question.
So we’ll all keep crowding into Forks.
At the other end of Western Washington, several advisory panels recommended that if gene banks for native fish recovery need to be implemented, they should be the East Fork Lewis and the North Toutle-Green Rivers. Those would be the first in the southwestern portion of the state, and join the Sol Duc as the only with that designation.
Also on the steelhead front, in September and November new research was published on what may be ailing Pugetropolis stocks, and it ain’t just ocean conditions or messed up freshwater habitat. The Whulge itself is where as much as four out of five wild smolts die, and 88 percent of production fish, according to research by a consortium of federal, state, tribal and other scientists.
AN ARTICLE IN THE JANUARY 2014 ISSUE OF NORTHWEST SPORTSMAN LOOKS AT THE PLIGHT OF PUGET SOUND STEELHEAD SMOLTS.
Meanwhile, researchers in Idaho have figured out how to deal with low survival of kelts down the Columbia-Snake: Just cut out the return trip past the dams, through the ocean, etc., and “air-spawn” them — extracting eggs without killing the fish — and keep them on site for another season.
And with another Northwestern stock also faltering, the clampdown on sturgeon fishing continues. For this and the next two years, there will be no retention of the long-lived species throughout almost all of Washington and Oregon as managers try to better understand the population. Only three reservoirs in the Columbia Gorge and the middle Willamette will have keeper seasons.
WASHINGTON’S FISH AND WILDLIFE COMMISSION SAW TURNOVER, including near the top. Vice chair Gary Douvia of Kettle Falls got a letter from new Governor Jay Inslee saying that he wouldn’t be reappointed after serving two terms. Another longtime member, Chuck Perry of Moses Lake, was given papers too. They had been on the citizen oversight panel since 2006 and 2005, respectively.
At least neither had the ignominy of being forcefully removed by legislators like David Jennings did for being “too … polarizing,” according to one powerful senator.
Filling the empty seats, Jay Holzmiller of Anatone and Puget Sound purse seiners’ Bob Kehoe, while Bellingham PhD Brad Smith was named vice chair. Though she’s served as long as Perry, Miranda Wecker of Naselle remains the guiding hand on the commission.
WE ALL REMEMBER THE BUDGET IMPASSE IN WASHINGTON DC that shut down access to federal boat ramps, campgrounds and other facilities just as sportsmen headed to the deer woods and tried to capitalize on good salmon runs …
A BARRICADE AT THE ENTRY TO THE U.S. FOREST SERVICE’S EARLY WINTERS CAMPGROUND NEAR MAZAMA, WASH. , IN MID-OCTOBER. USUALLY A COUPLE DEER CAMPS WOULD BE SET UP HERE FOR THE OPENING OF RIFLE SEASON, BUT THE FEDERAL BUDGET FIASCO PREVENTED THAT TRADITION. (ANDY WALGAMOTT)
… but 2013 will also be remembered (if only by a few) in the other Washington for what nearly was: an almost complete closure of fishing across the state.
In late June, with legislators in Olympia stalemated, WDFW was forced to consider shutting down most lakes, rivers, and saltwaters, as well as temporarily lay off almost everyone except for the folks feeding endangered hatchery steelhead and salmon.
And then a budget was passed and the press releases and e-regs were round-filed.
But in the lead-up to the fiasco, lawmakers did have time to pass a law outing words like fishermen from the EverPC State’s official vocabulary.
(WashDOT’s highway maps have yet to been shortened to read Cowee River.)
ON THE INDUSTRY SIDE OF THINGS, April 25, 2013, was a very auspicious day. Not only did Cabela’s announce it planned to open a 100,000-square-foot store in Tualatin, outside Portland, but Bass Pros Shops said it was going to build one almost twice as big in Tacoma.
Both are slated to open this year, and the location of the latter, about 20 miles north of the Lacey Cabela’s, is dangerously close to the wallet of a Northwest sportsman in our employ: “If Bass Pros does put a store here, I will be officially broke … but damn happy.”
Yakima Bait’s magicians mashed up the venerable but out-of-production Okie Drifter with their Corky to come up with the Corky Cluster.
In apparent payback for sport support of reforming salmon management on the big river, at the outset of the Buoy 10 fall Chinook fishery the Port of Asstoria decided to charge anglers $20 to park at the popular East Mooring Basin ramp and other facilities.
The move was reversed, however, after the Oregon marine board reminded them that the deal was to keep the price at $5, and to lay off the whiskey during commission meetings.
The Idaho Fish & Game Commission celebrated 75 years, as did the Vancouver Trout Hatchery, while 2013 also marked year 40 of the Endangered Species Act, and September was the five-year anniversary of Northwest Sportsman magazine.
And salmon hatcheries were opened in North-central Washington and Central Idaho. The former, the Colville Tribes’ facility at Bridgeport, has a capacity of 2.9 million spring and summer Chinook while the latter, in Idaho, will aid recovery of sockeye in the Salmon River watershed.
NORTHERN PIKE ERADICATION EFFORTS in Northeast Washington’s Pend Oreille River passed the 10,000-fish mark — note to those outlaw gillnetters: your expertise could actually be useful here.
Meanwhile, Oregon stocked 25,000 of their (sort-of) cousins — tiger muskies — into Phillips Reservoir in a bid to reduce the perch population and bring back the once-thriving rainbow trout fishery.
The latter state’s effort was notable because ODFW has been very conservative about dropping nonnative fish into its waters.
Well, since the John Day got 80 randy smallies in 1971.
Speaking of, researchers suggested that if water temps in the North-central Oregon watershed keep going the way they’re going, you — or at least your grandkids — will be able to catch bass in the uppermost reaches of the John Day in the future. UW scientists said that the Middle Fork will be 3.6 to 5.4 degrees warmer by the year 2080, enough for the nonnative species to spread all the way into its headwaters, way up around the 4,000-foot level.
Speaking of the climate, weather was a big factor in 2013, with hot water boiling 60 percent of the spring Chinook run in the John Day in early July and leading to another start of hunting season with widespread land closures due to fire danger while dry conditions at the end of the year led to low and clear water conditions that made for less-than-great steelheading.
YOU CAN BROIL CHINOOK, BUT THEY SHOULD NOT BE BOILED. (ODFW)
But the whims of the jet stream weren’t all bad news: December’s cold snap allowed Jack Frost to do his work on invasive New Zealand mud snails in Capitol Lake in Olympia. Its basins were lowered and an estimated 40 to 60 percent of the little molluscs froze their feet off.
Unfortunately, the unwanted species continued to spread in 2013, with new discoveries in the lower Chehalis and lower Snohomish Rivers, and treating those would be a lot more costly.
Back on the warmwater fisheries front, in a major change that still will have only limited impact, WDFW scrapped daily and size limits on bass and walleye in the middle and upper Columbia and Snake Rivers and their tribs in hopes of cutting down on predation of ESA salmon and steelhead smolts.
TWO OF THE OLDEST NORTHWEST SPORTSMEN were the subject of accolades.
Frank Moore, a 90-year-old Oregon fly angler-conservationist and World War II veteran, was featured in a crowd-funded movie that returned him to the beaches and streams of Normandy for filming this past spring while a pic of 97-year-young Gordon Blossom’s 70th deer was posted on Facebook by WDFW. The E-burg hunter took it in Northeast Washington.
HE MIGHT BE THE OLDEST ACTIVE HUNTER IN WASHINGTON — GORDON BLOSSOM, 97, BAGGED THIS WHITETAIL IN NORTHEAST WASHINGTON DURING THE 2013 SEASON. (COURTESY BLOSSOM FAMILY)
In September, Rance Block of the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation was given the Washington Wildlife and Recreation Coalition’s Joan Thomas Award for a lifetime’s worth of conservation work in the Evergreen State; for his part, the retired lands manager said it didn’t belong to him, but rather the “16,000 Washington RMEF members.”
In March, former U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service forensic scientist Bonnie Yates, who worked out of the agency’s Ashland office for 20 years, received the 2013 Clark R. Bavin Law Enforcement Award from the Animal Welfare Institute (AWI) and Species Survival Network (SSN) in recognition of her outstanding contributions to global wildlife protection.
TWO OF THE BEST WILDLIFE IMAGES WE SAW IN 2013 showed live critters prancing and parading around the Northwest.
In October horseback rider/photographer William Erickson captured a stunning image of a mule deer buck at the top of a sand dune above the Hanford Reach, as if it was some oryx in the Sahara instead.
(WILLIAM ERICKSON)
And in March, Jerry Dedloff, a tech at WDFW’s Snake River Lab in the small Blue Mountains foothills town of Dayton, snapped several pics of gobblers as they strutted their way past the grand old Liberty Theater and then across the lawn of the Columbia County Courthouse.
(JERRY DEDLOFF, WDFW)
SIX NEW RECORD-FISH WERE CAUGHT IN WASHINGTON, the largest of which was Phil Colyar’s Lake Chelan Mackinaw, which mashed the standing high mark by a fifth of a pound. The Wenatchee jeweler’s trophy went 35.63 pounds on a local hospital’s new-baby scale.
ONE PROUD PAPA, ERR, ANGLER! (PHIL COLYAR)
Also of note in the neighborhood, monster-kokanee chasers updated their GPS coordinates from Wallowa, Loomis and American Lakes to the lower end of the great inland fjord: Chelan put out some unexpectedly large landlocked sox in early spring. Fishing wasn’t fast by any means, but anglers were catching fish nearly twice as big as past years’ fare.
THE PIC THAT STARTED THE STAMPEDE: GUIDE JEFF WITKOWSKI’S MID-MARCH CATCH AT CHELAN CAUGHT THE ATTENTION OF THE KOKANEE-MAD. (JEFF WITKOWSKI)
Other fish populations showed signs of life as well, including Lake Washington sockeye which came in fast and easily topped the preseason forecast and got anglers excited, but ultimately piddled out halfway to the needed number for a fishery, while Cowlitz River smelt came in strong as well, showing signs of recovery, and even spawning talk of dipping this year.
FINALLY, THE ODD: IN ADDITION to mahi mahi, opah and mola molas visiting our shores, three striped bass swam up the Columbia — one of which was a whopping 52-pound, egg-bearing female.
THE WHALE. (WDFW)
Somebody’s alligator snapping turtle was captured in Prineville Reservoir …
WATCH THOSE FINGERS! (ODFW)
… while a 4-pound pacu, the South American vegan cousin of the piranha, was landed at a north Puget Sound lake.
A trio of antelope also tramped through Southeast Washington for the first time since … well, we’re not quite sure, but certainly some time between Lewis & Clark’s passage and the arrival of the combines, and a deer with a “very rare” coat — almost black — was photographed in Okanogan County. It was described by a biologist as showing signs of being melanistic, a condition that is “very rare in mule deer.” If that amorous buck behind it was any indication, there might be two or three of ‘em come June.
(JUSTIN HAUG, WDFW)
Even if the wolf front was quiet, there was rarely a dull moment in 2013, and if 2014 is anything like this past 365 days, this year will be pretty interesting!