Idaho paid anglers nearly $9,000 for these non-native fish. This year, it’ll pay more
Idaho Fish and Game announced last week that it would again reward anglers for helping it learn more about a potentially harmful invasive fish species — walleye that swim in the waters of North Idaho’s Lake Pend Oreille.
Last year, the agency started a walleye lottery that could potentially pay out $50,000. Officials embedded microscopic tracking tags, invisible without special scanning equipment, in the snouts of several walleye. If an angler caught one of the fish and submitted the head to a Fish and Game freezer location, the angler would automatically receive a $1,000 reward. Non-tagged heads would each count toward one entry in a weekly $100 lottery.
“Unfortunately none of the $1,000 tagged fish were submitted last year,” agency officials said in a news release.
Still, Fish and Game received 785 walleye heads and paid out nearly $9,000 to anglers who won the weekly drawings. And the agency said it will improve the odds for anglers to reel in a $1,000 catch this year.
“Our goal is to tag an additional 50 high-dollar reward fish ahead of Memorial Day weekend,” said Ken Bouwens, mitigation staff biologist for Fish and Game, in the release prior to the holiday weekend.
Fish and Game also offered some hints gleaned from the data collected during last year’s lottery. It said the majority of the fish caught came from the shallower, warmer northern side of Lake Pend Oreille.
“In early May, walleye anglers were finding fish in the Clark Fork River and on the Clark Fork River Delta. Now that the walleye spawn is predominantly over, the Clark Fork and Pack River Deltas and the shallow warming bays west toward Sandpoint should be good bets in the coming weeks,” said fisheries research biologist Pete Rust in the news release.
Radio telemetry data collected by the agency also showed the Clark Fork River, the Clark Fork River Delta, the Sandpoint long bridge and the Pend Oreille River near Laclede as consistent summer hot spots for walleye.
Officials said the point of the lottery is not to completely eradicate walleye, which are not native to the area. Instead, they hope to understand how recreational angling can keep the population in check so that the predatory fish don’t begin to threaten native populations like kokanee salmon and rainbow trout.
“We were happy to see that the number of anglers participating the walleye lottery was similar to the number of participants in the lake trout incentive program,” Bouwens said. “Most people submitted less than five heads, which tells us that lot of people are participating and not just a few experts who have figured out Pend Oreille walleye.”
Find a full list of freezer locations, as well as detailed information on the incentive program, visit idfg.idaho.gov.
