Trout Netting Ends

Upper Priest Lake

More than 600 lake trout have been gillnetted and removed from Upper Priest Lake in the second year of a project to help boost threatened bull trout.

An Idaho Fish and Game Department study of lake and bull trout populations at Upper Priest in 1977 found that lake trout, a non-native species, were rapidly increasing their numbers since the mid-1980s. Meanwhile native bull trout were declining, said Phil Cooper, department spokesman.

Last year lake trout outnumbered bull trout 10 to one at Upper Priest, Cooper said.

Bull trout were federally listed as an endangered species last month.

The department did a test to see if anglers could be recruited to crop the lake trout at Upper Priest. But anglers caught far more bull trout than lake trout.

“The high incidental catch of bull trout is a great concern as many anglers are unable to differentiate the two species,” Cooper said.

The gillnets have been tended hourly, Monday-Thursday, by researchers staying at the upper lake. Workers used nets to catch 150 lake trout last year and 453 this year while killing only one bull trout, said Jim Fredericks, fisheries biologist.

“Last week we pulled nets off the lake and shifted our efforts to studying tributaries because of the warmer water temperatures,” he said. “We’ll start netting again in September and go until weather forces us off in November.”

The department had worked out a program this summer to give the lake trout to area food banks.

Next year, the department will evaluate the success of the program to boost bull trout, Fredericks said.