The tragedy continues, but one businessman seems adaptable.
Angling for a solution
Ridding Lake Davis of northern pike is more than a conservation measure. For the businesses of Portola, it's an economic necessity.
By Jon Ortiz - Bee Staff Writer
Published 12:00 am PDT Monday, September 3, 2007
The northern pike infesting nearby Lake Davis is a predator so voracious that it sometimes chokes to death trying to eat other fish. As business owners in this eastern Sierra Nevada mountain town know too well, pike also can devour your livelihood.
For more than 10 years, grocery stores, hotels and restaurants here have felt the pike's bite. The carnivorous fish has twice overrun Lake Davis, spoiling its reputation as one of the West Coast's premier spots for rainbow trout and bleeding the local economy of millions of fishing tourism dollars.
State wildlife managers poisoned the lake in 1997 despite bitter protests and legal challenges over environmental and health concerns. After officials restocked it with trophy-quality trout, fishing boomed on the lake for about a year.
Then, in 1999, the pike resurfaced in Lake Davis. Fishing fell off. State officials have worried ever since that the fish might escape, move downstream and devastate native fish in the Sacramento River and the Delta.
Now authorities are about to shut down Lake Davis and poison it again. Local business owners whose income has dwindled with the lake's shrinking trout population are cautiously putting their faith in the state's $16.7 million plan -- but there are no guarantees. Many remember the promises a decade ago that poisoning Lake Davis would kill the fish for good.
… Fishing guide Bryan Roccucci already is looking ahead to trolling next spring on a restocked lake free of pike.
As the owner of Big Daddy's Guide Service, he used to load six anglers at $150 per person per day into his 23-foot Boulton boat for trout trips on Lake Davis.
"The fishing was so good back then that you felt guilty about keeping a 4-pound rainbow (trout)," said Roccucci, a burly man with a salt-and-pepper goatee and a deep suntan from days spent on the water. "You knew that if you threw it back, you'd catch a 6-pounder in the next 30 minutes. It's not like that any more."
Lake Davis trips once accounted for more than a third of his business. Now Roccucci rarely goes there. The downturn forced him to shift his focus to other nearby lakes.
And last spring, much to the chagrin of state wildlife officials, he offered pike "catch and kill" runs on Lake Davis, hoping the fish's reputation as a hard-hitting fighter would recapture some of his lost business.
"Don't get me wrong. I support eradicating the pike," he said. "But I've got to make a living, too."
