Calendar
| Sept 9 - Oct 31 | Fall office hours, open Wednesday & Saturday mornings |
Headlines
- In June we stocked all the lakes except Shagwa
- Buy your guest passes by mail and save yourself any last minute stress!
- Please fill out the survey cards at Shagwa and Nokomis
Water Status - As has been widely reported, the snowpack is nearly the lowest on record for the Colorado River Basin, and it's the same for us in the North Lone Pine watershed. We captured a little local runoff from the early May snowstorm, but most of it soaked into the ground. We have been called out and unable to store water, which we expect will persist throughout the runoff season. We'll of course carefully manage the fisheries for what is shaping up to be a low water year. Let's hope we have a strong and prolonged summer monsoon season to help offset this summer's evaporation of our lakes.
Fishing - The first couple months of the season have seen very good fishing. Despite low water levels, anglers and families have enjoyed success at all the lakes. In April and again in June we stocked all the lakes with a mix of stockers and trophies from Crystal Springs Trout Farm. And we've stocked Donaldson's in Shagwa, Browns in Apache and Erie, and Tigers in Nokomis. These Browns and Tigers are very expensive, over $10 per fish, so please handle them with care when you catch and release them! Also, please fill out the fish survey cards so that we can get data on the sizes and growth of the Tigers at Nokomis and the Donaldsons at Shagwa. We hope you have a fun and successful fishing season!
Office Manager Change – due to personal reasons Allsion is stepping away from our office manager duties. In her place we’re bringing back Ericca Hirt, who is a familiar person to many of you. You probably haven’t noticed the switch as both are so great at their jobs. We have been so grateful to have Allison head up our office these past five years and now she's helping us patrol the lakes!
2026 Spring Projects - we did some road work along the east side of Letitia and south side of Erie. We also pulled dead trees and brush from several of the dams, using the low water levels to get access to areas that normally are inaccessible.
Pelicans - once again we're inundated by a number of pelicans. As we've reported in the past, we have permission from the Federal Migratory Bird office to lightly harass them such that they move to other lakes. Our primary way of doing this is with our remote- controlled "Pelicanator" and similar looking decoys, which they consider a possible threat. We remind everyone, that unless you have explicit permission from the Federal Migratory Permit Office in Denver you should not be hazing the pelicans.
Boat Cleanup - We removed 7 boats from the lakes at the end of this fall's fishing season. Only two of the boats were properly stickered. If you forgot to remove your boat, you can arrange with the office for a time to come to our boat yard and identify it and bail it out for $200 + $5 boat registration. We want to thank everyone who removed their boats at the end of the season. We can't emphasize enough how keeping boats properly stickered is key to successfully storing your boat at our boating lakes.