Fish Pond Opening Delayed

DAYTON – It's hard to find the right person to ask about the juvenile fish pond at the Dayton City Park.

Technically the city owns the pond and the water right that allows it to exist. The Washington State Department of Fish and Wildlife operates the pond because it's stocked by the state with trout annually. And Steven Martin, with the Snake River Salmon Recovery Board, has sometimes had a hand in managing it because his agency seeks to ensure we always have fish in our waterways.

When citizens start to worry that the end of March is approaching but the pond hasn't yet been filled or stocked for the season, they aren't sure who to talk to about it. So The Times made a few phone calls.

Jeremy Trump, the district fish biologist for southeast Washington, whose office is here in Dayton, said he has people working on the pond question now.

"For the last few years, we've been having trouble keeping water in there," Trump said. "This year we already have really low flows in the river, and we don't want another fish kill like we had a couple of years ago."

Water flows into the pond from the river through a screen that keeps wild fish out. When the river gets too low it falls below the level of the screen, and the pond is in danger of drying up. In 2013, this happened in a major way and hundreds of the stocked fish died.

Martin is working with the city of Dayton to install a new screen with a lower profile, purchased with money from Fish & Wildlife and other sources, that would allow it to operate at lower stream flows. That screen should arrive this week and will be installed sometime next week, Martin said.

"We were going to try and use the old screen, but the stream flow is already lower now than when they've had problems with it in the past," Trump said. Once the new screen is in place and the pond is filled, young fishermen will have to wait a little longer while the system is tested.

"We're going to make sure we can keep water in there before we get people excited that there's going to be fish in there," Trump said.

The Fish & Wildlife website lists the Dayton Pond as open year round, but the current management plan is to maintain water in the pond from near March 1 to the middle of July.

"Early March is when we typically have the pond fishable, so we're looking at it being a little late this year," Martin said. "My crystal ball is that the pond will be operational through mid-June at the latest. We've all seen the snow pack records; the river is dropping like a rock. Our goal is always to have it open through the Fourth of July weekend, but we can't control Mother Nature."