FISHING – An angler’s photo showing two dozen northern pike in a recently dewatered portion of Lake Roosevelt didn’t surprise the region’s fisheries managers – too much, that is.

The angler said the pike had been stranded in a portion of the Kettle River Arm as the level of Lake Roosevelt has been lowered in the past week.

The unconfirmed photo was forwarded to Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife biologists, who, along with the Kalispel Tribe, have begun the fourth year of netting and removing invasive northern pike in the Pend Oreille River near Newport.

“We are aware of low densities of pike in the Kettle Arm, but this is a very troubling photo,” said Jason Olson, the tribe’s pike suppression project manager.

The Pend Oreille netting is intended to suppress the pike to reduce the chance that they’ll move downstream and into the Columbia’s salmon and steelhead reaches.

“We have been receiving recent reports of pike harvest in the Kettle River,” said John Whalen, the state’s regional fisheries manager in Spokane. “WDFW is coordinating spring work plans with the Colville and Spokane tribes for some expanded northern pike assessment work this spring in (Lake Roosevelt) with an emphasis in the lower Kettle River impounded area below the Barstow Bridge.”

Anglers are encouraged to catch, keep and kill any pike they catch in Lake Roosevelt or the Pend Oreille River, he said.

• Washington fishing regulations for pike:  No minimum size, no possession limit.  The fish must be dead before being removed from the riparian area (immediate vicinity of water body) where the fish was caught. 

---

---