Island Lake – Not What It Once Was, But Still Pretty Good

Yesterday I finally got a chance to fish at Island Lake in the Silverdale area while my wife took care of other business in the shopping center.

I had first heard about this lake from my California bud, Ed Wall, who in his younger days lived in 15 different houses in the nearby Port Orchard/Bremerton area. The house thing is another story.

Ed used to go to Island Lake as a teen-ager where at that time (the mid-1950’s) there was an establishment somewhere on the Lake that hosted weekend dances. Seems this popular gal from East (Bremerton) High named Darlene was known to cut a sassy swath on the dance floor there.

Ed didn’t (and doesn’t) know how to dance much, but he’d “hang” there on Saturday nights in his white T-shirt with sleeves rolled up and low-slung Levis, hoping to catch Darlene’s eye.

I guess it must have worked. They’ve been married almost 45 years. (The photo shows Ed and Darlene with their five grandchildren, taken just short of two weeks ago.)



But yesterday, hard as I looked, I saw no dance hall at the lake. In fact, I saw no island either. The sleepy, now darkly-hued but still quite clear body of water is surrounded by hills, homes, cabins, trees and a couple of outlying middle-class real estate developments.

I found a fishing dock at the County Park that has been nicely developed there with a playground, rest rooms, and improved shoreline. They stock the lake each spring with a few thousand catchable-sized rainbow trout, including some larger triploids. With a few even better-sized carryovers always around from the previous year, it offers a nice recreational challenge.

Six of us were on the dock for the two hours I had my line in the water. That’s 12 fisherman-hours. Three rainbows were caught. That means, on average, it takes four hours to catch a rainbow there.

Unfortunately, you know how short a time I had to soak bait. You can make your own conclusion as to whether or not I caught fish.

The best part of being there, however, was getting to see a spectacular Washington wild life "happening". The guy next to me hooked a fish, but it shook the snare and disappeared in the murky-bottomed drink before he could get it in. Soon the fish could be seen floating belly-up on the surface about 50 feet out.

In less than 10 seconds from the time we spotted the fish, two giant Bald Eagles swooped down from the treetops about 150 yards away. In no time the birds were skimming along like gliders, a foot or two off the water, heading straight for the gasping fish.

While still moving very fast, the lead bird effortlessly snatched the fish from the water with its sharp talons and aerobatically soared upward and back toward the lair with the fish continuing to struggle in the deadly grip.

A perfect precision-like maneuver by the once-endangered eagle resulted in life likely continuing for the pair’s young. I had witnessed a snapshot of nature’s indiscriminate life cycle.

And all of this occurred just a 20-minute drive from home. Is this a great State, or what?