I was told by one of the bait and tackle stores that there has been sturgeon planted in swafford pond just out side of mossyrock.Has anyone fished for them or is this even true. Ive fished riffelake for 20yrs and never seen any sturgeon being cuaght over there. Anyone fish riffe lake would like to maybe trade a couple storys

ive fished swafford pond a few times, its choked full of weeds with tons of stunted sunfish and a few rainbows. its very shallow and muddy, ive never heard or seen anything about sturgeon out of that lake...it sounds to me like some dis-information to lead you away from someones favorite spot, maybe riffe lake??? i would believe if someone had caught carp out of swafford, maybe they had mistaked a carp for a sturgeon then passed that along to the guy at the store??

Swafford has catfish also. If there are sturgeon in there it is because some buffon decided it would be fun to put a few in there and I wouldn't think there would be enough in there to fish for them...
If your after sturgeon this is a good time to be on the lower columbia chasing them around or when the rivers flood is another good time to chase them on smaller systems. Try the chehalis river.

The game dept has planted some small 12" white sturgen in lakes in e.wash. To see if they will help control the sunfish. So it may be possible!

We did put sturgeon in the pond - but if they (us) said it was to control sunfish that is a pretty lame reason because they aren't going to do that.

There is a misconception that sturgeon are used to clean ponds and hatchery raceways and control small fish species and that's just not reality.

The fact is more likely that the person who put them in there wanted to see how they would do in the pond as a way to create a new type of fishery.

The water quality in this lake is horrible and I know that there are groups looking at ways to control the problem. If I had to make a suggestion it would be to use Endothall. This is what we used in Kress Lake. It targets only milfoil, does not harm fish or wildlife or people (although there is a mandatory water closure for a few days) and is VERY effective. Another alternative is grass carp.

The alternative that I have heard mentioned, that I do not like at all, is to drain the pond. That puts the warmwater fish, stunted or not, at too much of a risk for loss - although I would go in and remove as many as possible - this lake is a good water for our channel cats.

I will be sampling this water in May to see what is going on with the sunfish/catfish and figure out what we can do to get the warmwater fish back on the right track.



stace