Anyone know if there are any Small Mouth lakes in Jefferson or Mason Countys. I heard Gibbs lake has some but I dont know for sure.

Thanks.

Rich-- While there are bass in Jeffco lakes, there aren't any smalllies to my knowledge. Mason County has smallmouth in Island although the last time I checked it, all I could find were largemouth. I've heard that Mason has smallies, but I don't know from my own experience.

Check the home page for Washington Lakes.com and then check out lake reports for Mason County. There are some very good lakes for bass around Shelton.

Keith

While I haven't fished Gibbs in years, I do know that in the past Gibbs used to have one hell of a population of small mouth bass. Last time I fished it it was a private lake owned by the Chief Sealth Council of the Boy Scouts before they sold it under the table to Manke Logging out of Tacoma.

I haven't been to Gibbs in years fishing even though we own property within a mile of Gibbs, but the last time I was there there was a very healthy bass population.

When Cher and her husband were living on the lake they would buy and plant a couple hundred trout every year.

Up until the time the County traded Manke county land for the Gibbs Property for a County Park WDFW kept their noses out of the management of the fishery on the lake and it was thriving. Now that it's out of private ownership and in the public sector I don't know how the fishery is.

A couple of years ago WDFW planted fish in a number of the little lakes in the Thornedyke area south of Hwy 104 at the Hwy 19 Junction on Pope Land without letting Pope Resources know and then opened the lakes up to a year round fishery, only problem is Pope keeps the gates locked and you can't get to the lakes.

Rich -
Try this site of species list of various lakes - listed by counties.

http://wdfw.wa.gov/outreach/fishing/warmtbl.pdf

Tight lines
S malma

Thanks Smalma!

My mom and dad live near Gibbs and I fished it some when I was a kid. Only remember catching cutts and catfish but never any smallmaout but I have heard of them in there.

Id shure like to fish for some smallies. My uncle has a smallish lake on Eaglemount lots of largemouth, rainbows and a few cutts. Id like to throw some Smallies in there but then agian the trout have it hard enough as it is.

Rich
You are right, the cutts would take a hit if there was an illegal introduction of SMBs.

Our coastal cutthroat have taken a major hit from all the illegal introductions of bass and panfish in our lowland lakes. The cutts are the one trout that was likely to naturally occur in many of the lowland lakes - they can successfully spawning in the small trib streams. However with development of surrounding watersheds and the illegal introductions wild cutthroat have all but disappear from many of their historic waters.

Don't understand how any wild trout fan could ever think of introducing any exotics.

Tight lines
S malma

We have had a family place on Mason Lake since the '40's and I am not aware of any smallies. I really haven't fished for bass up there for a number of years but a lot of family members do, plus guests, and no one has ever mentioned small mouths. Some darn nice LM's and decent kokes.

Smalma,

I wouldnt do it, Im more of a trout fan anyways.


The lake is entirely on my famly's property so I was wondering if it is still illegal to introduce exotic species if you own the lake?

The Large Mouth were introduced back in the 1930's or so and at that time the lake only had cutts, catfish and chub.

Interesting story how the bass came to be. When my grandpa and his brothers were kids they dipped shiners AKA chubs out of the lake by the bucket full's and sold them to the bass anglers in the area for live bait. Some other kids, their compitition, wanted the entire market and decided to dump some bass in the lake to take care of the shiners. Within a couple of years there were no more shiners and my gandpa and his brothers were out of buisness.

Now nearly 70 years later there are still some wild cutts in the lake. Over the years my family has stocked it with Kamloops, rainbows, triploids and such. I have caught many hybrids over the years but cutts have still hung on. Now the lake only has triploids and hasnt had capible trout for five years or more. Havent caught any hybrids in a few years but I am seeing a few more cutts the last couple years.

I bet ya if they stopped stocking the lake all together and agressivly started harvesting the bass the Cutts would come back and take over agian.

Rich -
to plant any fish in the lake legally requires a permit from the State - inlcuding the trout.

The bass in most of our lakes came to be much the same way as in your lake - that is some one for whatever reason thought it was a good idea. Fishing the bass down isn't likley to help the cutthroat. It is virtually impossible to eliminate bass from a water by fishing them. They have such a high number of eggs even one pair will seed the lake. Actually the best thing for the trout survival is to try to manipulate the bass population so that you as many large bass as possible. Take the small ones for dinner and leave the larger ones in the lake for its health. A side result is a more quality bass fishery. This is the idea behind the slot limits on bass.

The bass impacts on the trout is more from food competition than predation so have mostly large bass in the lake while would increase the predation the reduction in food competition usually more than off set the lost from predation. The small bass and the trout eat much the same things will the large bass usually eat critters larger than would is normally eaten by trout.

Tight lines
S malma