Puget Sound Anglers stock Sequim pond for fall fishing

By Sequim Gazette Staff • October 10, 2018 1:30 am
Jamie and Gibson Hill of Sequim pull in a fish while Dave Dewald tries to net it at Kids Fishing Day in 2016. Organizers of the event plan to hold it May 19, 2018, but they hope to move the event to another pond in 2019 to preserve the fish in hot weather. Matthew Nash/Olympic Peninsula News Group
Jamie and Gibson Hill of Sequim pull in a fish while Dave Dewald tries to net it at Kids Fishing Day in 2016. Organizers of the event plan to hold it May 19, 2018, but they hope to move the event to another pond in 2019 to preserve the fish in hot weather. Matthew Nash/Olympic Peninsula News Group

The annual Kids Fishing Day has — for this year, anyway — turned into Kids Fishing Fall.

After warm weather nixed the North Olympic Peninsula Chapter of the Puget Sound Anglers’ annual, youth-friendly event in May, the group has restocked the pond and is inviting fishers 14 years or younger to stop by the pond at the Sequim Water Reclamation Facility just north of Carrie Blake Community Park.

“We decided to plant trout in the Carrie Blake Park Reclamation Pond this fall to provide fishing opportunities throughout the fall and winter rather than have a one-day event like we have been holding,” chapter president Bob Keck said.

“Trout are cold water fish and we are hoping that this fall plant will make for a longer fishing season for the local kids since the pond really gets too warm in the summer months to sustain the fish.”

Youths 14 years and younger do not need a license to fish at the pond. They can keep two fish per day; catch and release or sorting is not permitted, club officials say.

The local Sequim RC Aquanauts sailboat club has use of the pond from 10 a.m.-2 p.m. on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, and Puget Sound Anglers club members ask that fishers respect the Aquanauts’ pond usage.

Club members began stocking the pond with the first of 700 trout on Oct. 3, and will continue to periodically stock the pond over the next few months, club members said, utilizing fish that were raised for the 2018 event.

The Hurd Creek Hatchery has already received the fish for the 2019 Kids Fishing Day event.

Hosted and coordinated by Puget Sound Anglers, Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife and the City of Sequim, the Kids Fishing Day will be moved up one month to April 2019 — an exact date has yet to be determined — to avoid an ongoing problem of high water temperatures.

The event, hosted by Sequim for the past 12 years, saw about 500 rainbow trout die in June 2017 because of warmer than normal temperatures in the pond.