27 years and millions of fish

If you believe Banks Lake is a good place to fish, then you can thank a couple of local men who helped make it happen.

Reg Morgan, long since retired from U.S. Fish and Wildlife, and Bill Brashears, who passed away about a year ago, teamed up back in 1987, and started a program of providing fish for Banks Lake that continues today.

The organization POWER (Promoter of Wildlife and Environmental Resources) was founded about that time, with Bill's wife Betty coming up with the name.

Morgan remembers that when the two started feeding fish, for eventual stocking of the lake, they needed a name for the organization. That's where Betty came in with POWER and the name stuck.

Now, many millions of fish later, POWER through cooperation with Washington State Fish & Wildlife, has a major pen and feeding program in Electric City. The group receives some 150,000 fingerlings twice a year and grow them up to size for release. POWER mainly raises rainbow trout now, but over the years has raised other species for the fishery.

So when you see the campgrounds around Banks Lake crowded with tents, campers and trailers, and long lines of boat trailers, there's a reason. That reason is POWER and the thoughtful, forward looking decision Reg and Bill made nearly 30 years ago that is still being carried forward today.

The program translates into millions upon millions of fish, and countless financial benefits to the region.

The program was started for a time as a chamber of commerce venture. POWER needed the chamber for insurance purposes, but that was soon changed, and the group was on its own.

What's in a name? "About two or three weeks of putting ideas on a tablet," Betty said last week when she was recalling the time. When she came up with the name, the group was quick to latch on to it. "I tried to think of things the group wanted to do and build that into the name," she said.

The group is still building the fishery on Banks Lake. The players have changed some, but Carl Russell has been the mainstay in leadership for many years.

Bill had come to the area from Eatonville, Wash., where Betty had grown up. He was in the banking business there and continued that by starting the Security Bank of Washington in what is now the Foisy and Kennedy building on Midway Avenue in Grand Coulee. Bill was in the banking business for 30 years until he retired. He was an avid fisherman, and he and Morgan made a good team. Morgan had for years been the man to go to for hunting and fishing information and wrote a weekly column in The Star.

Morgan remembers how it all got started. He and Bill went up Lake Roosevelt to where the Spokane River enters the Columbia to see a pen and feeding program started there by Winn Self, Morgan recalls.

They liked what they saw, and the two rolled up their sleeves and got to work.

"Bill had the contacts, and I had the background," Morgan noted. Morgan worked for the U.S. Fish & Wildlife for more than 28 years.