Article Pike in Lake Roosevelt

[Kfedka]

Article from the Spokesman Review today. I copy and pasted the article, follow the link as it has a picture of a huge pike caught.
http://www.spokesman.com/outdoors/stori ... newsletter

Northern pike have bared their teeth in Lake Roosevelt this year, bringing to mind the early 2000s, when the non-native predators first showed up in significant numbers in the Pend Oreille River.

Fishermen have been catching some whoppers near Kettle Falls.

“While jigging for walleyes near the mouth of the Colville, I caught a 15-pounder ,” said Sean Hansen of Vancouver. “My friend who lives at Kettle Falls has caught more than 20 in the past couple of months.

“We were getting bit off last year while fishing for walleye and smallmouths and we didn’t put it together until I had a pike follow my lure all the way in.”

But pike enthusiasts shouldn’t get their hopes up that the fishery will boom in the Columbia River reservoir behind Grand Coulee Dam as it did in the late 2000s behind Box Canyon Dam:

• The habitat isn’t the same.

• State and tribal fish managers already are making plans to suppress the pike with gillnets.

Funding is being sought and northern pike in the Columbia Basin are on the agenda for the June 9 Northwest Power and Conservation Council meeting in Coeur d’Alene.

“We’re not going to mess around with these things,” said Chris Donley, Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife inland fisheries manager. “This is about salmon recovery and other complexities down the river we want to avoid.”

“There’s been some concern that fish would come down into the Columbia from the Pend Oreille,” says Chuck Lee, the department fisheries biologist who’s assessing the situation.

“A 2006 survey in the Pend Oreille estimated about 400 adult northern pike in Box Canyon Reservoir,” he said, noting that the fish apparently came downstream from illegal introductions in Montana. “A 2010 survey indicated the population had boomed to about 5,500 fish.

“The expansion happened very quickly. The Pend Oreille River has a lot of sloughy vegetated shallows that support spawning.”

The state and Kalispell Tribe began using gillnets to suppress northern pike. From 2012 to 2014 they removed 16,000 pike from the reservoir downstream from Newport.

Suppression netting this spring removed only 751 pike compared with about 5,700 netted in 2012 and about 6,000 in 2013

“Mechanical suppression on a large scale is very feasible,” said tribal biologist Jason Conner, who helps manage the netting program.

But the effort hasn’t prevented some pike from moving downstream, into Canada and the Columbia.

Two years ago, British Columbia biologists started identifying pike below Keenleyside Dam. A 2014 survey in that area estimated a population of 500-2,700 northern pike.

“Based on the concern for predation on sturgeon and native salmonids, they began pike suppression in 2014 and removed about 18 percent of the population,” Lee said. “They determined the pike diet was 76 percent salmonids – 44 percent mountain whitefish and 17 percent rainbow trout, plus kokanee.”

Canada plans to continue pike suppression in the Columbia, he said.

Washington and the area tribes plan to follow suit.

Pike first started showing in Lake Roosevelt fall walleye index study gillnetting in 2011, Lee said. “We caught only one in the Marcus area that year and up to seven last year, all just north of Kettle Falls, but the survey doesn’t extend into the Kettle River.

“We’ve had limited reports of pike harvest from anglers in the past, but never identified one in the creel until this year,” he added, noting that anglers have showed them to creel checkers at the Kettle Falls boat ramp.

The fish have been in the 24- to 36-inch range, caught roughly from the mouth of the Kettle River to the mouth of the Colville.

Fish managers plan to do a pike netting survey starting this spring. Work on the Pend Oreille River has shown the best time to target pike is during May as they’re spawning.

But Lake Roosevelt is still in a drawdown and waters aren’t flooding most of the shallows where pike would prefer to spawn.

Fish managers are waiting for the dam to refill, which won’t start until around June 1, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation says.

“The pike larvae need vegetation to cling to, and Lake Roosevelt doesn’t have much of that right now,” Lee said. “We’re holding off, probably until early June.

“Peak spawning usually happens in March and April. In Lake Roosevelt, that may not happen.”

Meantime, DNA testing is underway to determine if the pike showing up in Lake Roosevelt originated in the Pend Oreille River, in Canada waters or in the Kettle River Arm.

“That will give us an idea if pike are spawning in the Kettle,” Lee said.

He noted that northern pike have been found in Lake Spokane for years, but no pike spawning has been documented in the reservoir behind Long Lake Dam.

“That indicates those fish are coming down from Lake Coeur d’Alene,” he said. “We’re mostly concerned where pike might be spawning.

“There’s a lot of work that’s been done on redband trout focused on the Kettle River and tributaries of the Upper Columbia, as well as the sturgeon,” he said.

“We need to get a handle on the pike.”

Meanwhile, Sean Hansen and his Kettle Falls friend, Chris St. Clair, are enjoying their occasional run-ins with the toothy large predators.

“They’ve hit spinners, spoons, crankbaits, plastics – just about everything,” Hansen said. “I caught the big one on a jig. It was 15 pounds, full of eggs and had an 18-inch northern pike minnow in its stomach. The pike fillets were delicious.”

“We would like it if anglers would catch them and kill them,” Donley said. “We don’t need another predator in Lake Roosevelt. It’s got plenty now.”

Contact Rich Landers at (509) 459-5508 or by email at richl@spokesman.com.

[AJ's Dad]

Thanks for posting the article. I'm not going to get all wound up and start bellyaching about this issue like I did with the POR. It's not worth getting my blood pressure up. I will however point out this important comment I just copied out of the article. In my opinion, this sums up the whole thing. Ready------------ "Funding is being sought". Go figure. They said the POR had 5500 pike in 2010. I believe when they started the gill netting there they had bumped the number up to 7500 or so. Now they say they have netted 16000 of them over the 3 year period. My guess is that you can take whatever number the "Think" are in Roosevelt and triple it.

[Lucius]

So what is 76+44+17.....137. How does a pike eat more than 100% of their diet?

[harleypiker]

Hey, they are a top predator. Of course they can eat 137%--they're hungry!!!
I fished Roosevelt last evening and counted 27 fishermen along that shoreline stretch. Hard to find a parking space. Pike fever is picking up just like the P.O.R. did. I took 2 grandkids there again today when it was quiet and they had a ball. They caught two 27.5"x 5.75lbs and a 25"x4.75lb pike. Also a puny little 18.5" rainbow.

[kevinb]

So what is 76+44+17.....137. How does a pike eat more than 100% of their diet?

I assume they are using common core because it doesn't make sense but I suppose it doesn't have to so as long as money is to be made and the people making the decisions buy what is being sold, even if the math doesn't make sense. I just find it interesting that the very group that wants to declare war on a non native (northerns) in the name of protecting westslope trout have a non native (bass) hatchery. Seems like another case where the numbers don't add up. IMO

[Larry3215]

The report is poorly worded but the math works - maybe

“They determined the pike diet was 76 percent salmonids – 44 percent mountain whitefish and 17 percent rainbow trout, plus kokanee.”

I think what they mean is that the 76% salmonids is broken down into 44% white fish (a salmonid) + 17% trout + kokanee. I'm assuming the kokanee is the missing 15%.

Or - they just cant do simple math

[Lucius]

The report is poorly worded but the math works - maybe

“They determined the pike diet was 76 percent salmonids – 44 percent mountain whitefish and 17 percent rainbow trout, plus kokanee.”

I think what they mean is that the 76% salmonids is broken down into 44% white fish (a salmonid) + 17% trout + kokanee. I'm assuming the kokanee is the missing 15%.

Or - they just cant do simple math

Ok that makes sense now if I read it that way....I also didn't think about whitefish being a salmonid....also on a little bit of a different note I know Colorado doesn't like to have too many pan fish especially perch in lakes designated for trout because they compete with trout for food....so to add it all up the last number of trout That they found in the belly of the pike of all the pike they killed was 5, they have a non native bass hatchery...and the panfish will compete with trout for food.....oh never mind i can't make sense of crazy....
Also hows the popularity of the POR? I heard its back to the way it was before everybody found out about the pike...kind of sad really when the poorest county in Washington gets a surprise revenue generating machine taken away like that

[AJ's Dad]

There you go trying to make things make sense again.

[Lucius]

There you go trying to make things make sense again.

Yeah I know...it's the mechanical engineering in me...it's like I can't control it...it just happens

[AJ's Dad]

I think I figured out the whole math thing. I have an old calculator I got at the dollar store 10 years ago. I just added up 76+44+17 and I got 100. I think they must have used the same calculator when they did their math. It's also likely the same one they used when they decided there were 7500 pike in the por, then gillnetted 16000 of them.

[zen leecher]

So what is 76+44+17.....137. How does a pike eat more than 100% of their diet?

44 + 17 + x(kokanee) = 76 Whitefish are a distant part of the trout family

[Lucius]

Yeah I got that after re reading it with a prompt to think about it differently. How many people actually chase white fish?

[Larry3215]

As of a few weeks ago, I do They fight hard and taste pretty good too.

[Fish-N-Fool]

Also hows the popularity of the POR? I heard its back to the way it was before everybody found out about the pike...kind of sad really when the poorest county in Washington gets a surprise revenue generating machine taken away like that

As a Small Mouth bass fishery it's not bad. The L.M. population has suffered severely as the gill nets have kill almost as many of them as it has Pike (about 10,000+ fish, as the last time they reported the catch yeild it was at 9,000), but they will not tell you what it is now. As they don't want you to know how many other fish they are killing.

You don't see the number of boats out there any more for sure. I have fished it about a dozen times this year with mixed results. One trip we landed 76 Smallie's in about 4 hours, and 48 on another, before they started draining Lake P.O. and the water came up. After that the fishing went downhill in a hurry. But I did catch a few good L.M. and a small Pike downstream from my favorite S.M. spot.

[Lucius]

Just and update....I don't know if any of you saw this..


http://www.spokesman.com/blogs/outdoors ... ager-says/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[Fish-N-Fool]

More BS and lies feed to Rich Landers from the WDFW and he eats it up. Rich in one of those trout unlimited tree hugger kinda guys that think the only good Pike is a dead one so all of his articles are bais in that way. I see he disabled comments on the article so no one could appose his opinions. Just like the WDFW they hold meetings but don't want to hear any opinion that does not agree with theirs.

[Mark K]

It's a very expensive, losing battle. They will NEVER get every fish. If they EVER let up on the netting, even for a year, they will lose so much ground. This is something that will need funding, and boots on the ground for eternity. It really is just a matter of time. Pike are here to stay, and all this really is, is a money grab for the Tribes. An opportunity that they are going to run with until the barrel runs dry, or they're just tired of netting Pike after 50 years of unsuccessfully trying to stop their advancement.

[Billm]

I for one am all for removing, or attempting to remove any and all non-native fish from the waters. If I wanted to fish for the non-native fish, I would fish in an area where they are native. Our native fish should not need to compete with the non-native fish. There are many examples where non-native fish have taken over a body of water and depleted or seriously impacted the native fish.

[Mark K]

Doesn't change the fact that they are here to stay, Bill. Or that there are people who enjoy fishing for them. And remember, times change. Habitats are not the same as they once were. Water temps are increasing. Dams have been built. The environment has changed, and with that, different fish species thrive, while native species struggle. Keep that in mind while people blame Pike and Walleye for all of our problems.

[Larry3215]

Doesn't change the fact that they are here to stay, Bill. Or that there are people who enjoy fishing for them. And remember, times change Habitats are not the same as they once were. Water temps are increasing. Dams have been built. The environment has changed, and with that, different fish species thrive, while native species struggle. Keep that in mind while people blame Pike and Walleye for all of our problems.

Yup.