Bpa Bounty Lures Anglers To Squawfish Program Aims To Rid River Of Salmon’s Main Predator

Every day at dawn, Bob Hohnstein heads down to the Snake River to fish.

Using a hook baited with raw chicken parts, the retiree from Lewiston, on the Idaho side of the river, trolls the shallows along the bank for the northern squawfish.

Once considered a nuisance “garbage” fish, the giant relative of the minnow has become a multimilliondollar industry in recent years. From May through September, Hohnstein and tens of thousands of others along the Columbia and Snake rivers look for the dusky-green fish with a long snout and large mouth.

Squawfish populations are being decimated by sport fishermen under a $5.4 million Bonneville Power Administration program aimed at curbing the fish’s toll on dwindling regional salmon stocks.

Anglers are paid $3 for each specimen over 11 inches long. The graduated rate goes up to $5 per fish for those who catch 400 or more. The top angler in 1994 caught 2,300 squawfish and earned more than $13,000 in reward and prize money.

On a recent Thursday, Hohnstein brought in 10 squawfish after a day fishing from the bank. He has fished every day since the program began in 1991.

“I get a little spending money,” he said. “Basically, it pays for the gas.”

The BPA budgets about $770,000 for reward payouts and prizes, with the bulk of the program funds going to research on fish habits and biology, said John Skidmore, a BPA fishand-wildlife program analyst.

But the program gets just a fraction of the estimated $500 million being spent this year by the federal powermarketing agency and others in efforts to ease the impact of hydropower development and other projects on fish and wildlife.

Squawfish are one of the main finned predators faced by juvenile salmon and steelhead as they head downstream toward the ocean. Through the Northern Squawfish Sport-Reward Fishery Program, regional fishery managers hope to give those young fish a fighting chance.

The native squawfish, which can grow to 24 inches and and nearly 6 pounds, thrive in reservoirs behind federal dams, where juvenile salmon and steelhead are slowed in their seaward migration.

With a fast digestive system that makes it one of the few fish able to swallow prey longer than itself, biologists say northern squawfish may eat as many as 1.6 million juvenile salmon and steelhead each year.

Smallmouth bass and walleye also have a taste for salmonids, but squawfish are believed responsible for 80 percent of the predation by fish.

A mature squawfish can eat 8-10 salmon or steelhead smolts a day.