Save the Lake Pend Oreille Fishery!

How Do I Get Involved?
Go fishing and cash in! Lake trout of any size and rainbow trout more than 13 inches long from Lake Pend Oreille count for the $15 cash reward. Rainbow trout more than 13 inches caught in Lower Clark Fork River below the railroad bridge at Clark Fork (open all year) and from Lightning Creek, Grouse Creek and Pack River between April 1 and August 31 also are eligible.

Rules For Getting Paid:

1. Only rainbow and lake trout are eligible.
2. Rainbow trout heads must be a minimum of 2 3/8 inches long from tip of nose to end of gill cover. Only whole heads with the entire jaw and throat area intact are eligible for payment.
3. Cutthroat and cutthroat hybrids are not eligible.
4. Harvesting bull trout or kokanee is illegal, and will be investigated by a conservation officer. Know how to properly identify fish.
5. Your signature is required. We cannot pay anglers if slips are not signed.

How To Check Your Fish In

1. Please clean your fish on the lake – not on the dock or the freezer!
2. Leave the head of the rainbow or lake trout in the drop-off freezer, not the whole fish. You may put multiple fish heads in one bag.
3. Ziploc bags, water-proof slips and pencils are provided at freezer locations.
4. Fill out your name, mailing address, phone number, Idaho fishing license number and date of birth on one slip for each bag. You must sign the data slip to be eligible for the cash reward.
5. Put the bag through the small hatch door in the freezer and close the door.
6. A headless carcass is legal, so long as the tail is attached, by a special exemption from the Fish and Game Commission. Normally it is not legal to have a trout, bass, salmon or steelhead (any fish with a length limit) in the field or in transit without the head attached.

Fish Head Freezer Locations

• Holiday Shores Marina - Ellisport Bay
• Hope Marine Services - Ellisport Bay
• Anchor Gas - Garfield Bay
• Hudson's Bay Marina - Bayview
• IDFG Field Research Station - Bayview
• IDFG Regional Office - Coeur d'Alene

The Lake Pend Oreille Idaho Club, which is working with Fish and Game in this effort, will mail checks to anglers twice a month. Be sure to fill out the angler information slip properly.

What's the Problem with the Fishery?
Kokanee once provided half the entire sport fishery in Lake Pend Oreille with a harvest averaging one million fish annually. They also provide forage to grow world class rainbow and bull trout. Now there aren't enough kokanee to feed all the predators in Lake Pend Oreille. Rainbow and lake trout are the most significant predators on kokanee. The kokanee fishery was closed in 2000 and limits on rainbow and lake trout were liberalized.

Unfortunately, things have become worse, not better. Survival rates on young kokanee one to two years old have reached an all time low of 10 percent (normally it's 50 to 80+ percent). Survival rates for adult fish are also declining due to increased predation. The kokanee fishery remains closed in Lake Pend Oreille. One bright spot is that good hatchery fry production from the Cabinet Gorge Kokanee Hatchery and higher winter pool levels have resulted in good numbers of kokanee fry. The kokanee population can respond if predation can be reduced quickly and significantly.

How Many Predators Need to be Harvested?
In 2006, predatory fish ate about 551,000 pounds of kokanee in Lake Pend Oreille – that’s about 109,000 pounds more than annual kokanee production. To sustain the kokanee populations, predator numbers must be reduced until kokanee consumption is in balance with production.

Surveys found about 72,000 lake and rainbow trout big enough to eat kokanee in Lake Pend Oreille in 2006. The good news is that anglers caught about 17 to 22 percent of the rainbow trout, and anglers and netters caught 44.5 percent of the lake trout.

A computer model will help determine how fast rainbow and lake trout must be removed to bring kokanee consumption into balance with production. The results will be used to set targets for predator removal.

Spaghetti Tagged Fish
Some rainbow trout have been tagged behind the dorsal fin with green spaghetti tags worth $100 when turned in to IDFG. We are no longer paying for any spaghetti tags from lake trout. Anglers should mail the spaghetti tag and information about the fish species, length, weight and date the fish was caught to:

• Greg Schoby
  Idaho Department of Fish and Game
  P.O. Box 806
  Bayview, ID 83803