Bayley Lake Channel Restoration 2024

What a day! We had 12 volunteers this year and met at the Maverick’s restaurant in Colville for breakfast which, as usual, was very good.

Background
Many years ago the IEFFC put in weirs (low dams) and laid down gravel in the ponds formed by the weirs to create spawning beds in the short, channel-like stream that flows out of Potters Pond into Bayley Lake. The idea was to enable rainbow trout to come up in the channel in early spring and spawn with the females getting rid of their eggs enabling them to live a year or two longer than the normal three years. This of course, meant more large fish in Bayley. Normally, the water in the channel gets too warm for the fertilized eggs to hatch so there isn’t much, if any, natural reproduction.

Present
During the summer the grass grows almost chest-high in the dry channel and along the banks. The grass restricts the flow. Also, the gravel gets moved around and is sometimes covered with sand. Just about every year a group of members from the IEFFC has gone up in September or October to cut the grass and clean it out of the channel. We also renew the gravel as required. Most years the channel is dry so it is fairly easy to do the work and usually takes about two hours. In past years
the Little Pend Oreille Wildlife National Refuge (LPO) has provided the gravel. We used up the last of the gravel last year and the LPO was unable to provide gravel this year so the IEFFC purchased the gravel and had it delivered to the LPO.

The following IEFFC members worked on the project: Jerry McBride, Bill Faloon, Bob Schmitt, Eric Apelskog, Bob Johnson, Guy Gregory, Scott Fink, Jeff Pope, Phil
Beck, Jake Nelson, Doug Brossoit, and Chad Hueter.

We traveled in caravan style to Bayley Lake, unloaded equipment and set about cleaning out the chest high grass that had grown up and renewed the gravel. The grass was the thickest we have ever seen. As usual, Bill Papesh loaned us his gas powered hedge trimmer which was wielded by Phil Beck and later by Chad Hueter. Doug Brossoit brought his hedge trimmer also. They led the way with others raking the cut grass out of the channel and spreading gravel where needed.

After we finished the work Bob Schmitt provided sack lunches and assorted beverages for the group. Thanks to Bob for doing this again this year. We launched our boats on Bayley Lake and fished for about four hours. With 12 people fishing only a few had bites and Scott Fink caught the only fish which was about six inches long. Very disappointing. As far as I know, Bayley has never had a summer or winter kill, but it looks like maybe this year there was a summer kill. Scott and I fished Bayley in late April this year and caught a fair number of really big fish so we know there were fish in the lake go ing into the summer. Not sure what happened this summer, but it doesn’t look good. IEFFC member Father David fished Bayley about a week before us and caught three large fish. Father David is an outstanding fisherman so maybe the rest us just don’t measure up. Of course, being a Catholic priest probably doesn’t hurt when it comes to fishing.

In spite of the poor fishing, I would say we had a successful day with lots of
camaraderie and work well done.