Best post ever!!!! Unreal how bad of a mess up that whole scenario is! I hope that no one shows up for the tourney up there, and anyone that goes refuses to kill the pike that they catch and gives up the prize money just to prove a point!! I'm thinking about starting a fund and pays anyone a dollar for every pike they transfer from any body of watervand dumps it back into the POR! 5500 bucks to replace 10 million dollars worth of bs that they paid for!!!! ( I'm not bitter at all ). Lol. Gl to y'all

I echoe jjbowler's comments. I was ok with thinning the herd but not destroying the fishery and the bs story that the tribe put out. They claim it was to support native fish species but they have a largemouth bass hatchery. I love bass fishing but seems a bit hypocritical to promote one non native species and declare war on another all in the name of enhancing native runs. Sadly,it will be the Pend Oreille commerce that suffers.Maybe the tribe can give some of those extra funds back to local business that will be missing revenue(yeah right?) I just got home from a pike trip to Idaho....granted,I'm not Mr.Moneybags but I just got home from a pike trip in north Idaho. No sense for me to commute from the Seattle area to a dead fishery.Its really unfortunate,I love the scenery on the Pend Oreille river and fished it many times but my tourist/fishing dollars will now continue to be spent in the Coeur d'Alene area. Ok,stepping down from my soapbox. I appreciate the report and nice job out there considering the circumstances.

We fished it last weekend for 1 Pike was all I saw a couple others, but everything was 20" or less. I guess thats the size that made it through the nets. So all thats left is a hammer handle fishery. I saw them empty nets in May and saw them remove 15 LM Bass from one net. All I keep hearing from the bass guys are I'm glad there getting rid of the Pike, what they dont understand I guess is that they are killing your fishery as well. These nets dont know the diffrence between a Pike and a Bass as I saw first hand. They say they only catch Pike but that was another Lie. The PO River is dead. Thanks WDFW and the Kalispels. I hope the hatchery is going strong since they will need to replace all the Bass that were killed during this process. Dont spend your money at any of the Casinos or at anything that has to do with the tribes. Spokane Indians are trying to remove Walleye on the Spokane arm as well .. Good fishing everyone I'm heading down to the Snake for Sturgeon and Channel Cats..Were going to fish the tournament to educate people to release all fish they catch. We will bring our fish in and then let them watch us release them back into the River.

"Were going to fish the tournament to educate people to release all fish they catch. We will bring our fish in and then let them watch us release them back into the River. " I may have to join you in doing this. I will be up there next week to give it a shot all weekend. I don't have much hope but we will see. I will not spend a dollar in Pend Oreille county while I'm up there. And I also agree with staying away from the casinos. And if you must go I'm sure the CDA tribe would be happy to take your money down in Worley. Oh, and you can fish for Pike in lake CDA on your way home!

The worst part, is all this is for nothing... In Ten years , the Pike will be dominating again...

Its just sad we wont have a nice Pike/Bass fishery for many years to come now.....

Pike are not going to go away... they are way to tough....

I am also one of the people that will not being spending my money in that area...

Thanks for the report ilv2fish!!! I must admit, I was wrong. I thought there were too many spawning areas and too much water that the netting would'nt make that big of a difference. I figured they would decrease the pop a little bit, but not bring it to the brink of extinction. There is no denying the pike will rebound in a couple of years....although the true outcome of this situation is yet to come to fruition. All the pike that slipped through the nets being the smaller fish may start spawning even earlier in their lives since the majority of the bigger pike are gone, and maybe in a few years the river will be overrun with small pike....but that is only a possible hypothesis and I am only speculating at this point.

I guess it will be off to the likes of Idaho, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota and Canada to go pike fishing!!!!

Can you hear that...21 gun salute for one of the best pike fisheries that use to be in the lower 48!!!!

Under normal conditions this fishery would come back. The problem is the Kalispels and WDFW will be netting evey year to make sure this fishery doesnt come back now that they have the numbers so low.....