Idaho urges anglers to kill more trout to save salmon

Newcomers are overtaking long-established residents, changing the very way of life at Lake Pend Oreille.

No, this isn’t a story about out-of-state investors and the real estate market.

This is about crashing kokanee salmon populations and how the balance between fish species is being changed in a single human generation. To restore balance, Idaho Fish and Game Department officials say, quick action is needed.

“The kokanee population is literally on the very brink of collapse,” said Ned Horner, the department’s manager of Panhandle fisheries. “We just can’t keep going on like this.”

Native to the Northwest but not Lake Pend Oreille, kokanee have been in the state’s largest lake since at least the 1930s, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

Native cutthroat trout populations were on the decline, and the small landlocked salmon soon filled an important role as the backbone of a multimillion-dollar sport fishery. Their flesh also forms the base of the food pyramid for much of the region’s fish and wildlife, from bears and eagles to otters and threatened bull trout.

In recent years, they’ve become a favored food for exotic predators, namely mackinaw, which are also called lake trout and were introduced into the lake in 1925, and rainbow trout, which were introduced in 1919 and again in 1941, according to a government report. Large tracts of kokanee spawning grounds have been wiped out by dam operations.

Horner and others worry that if the trend isn’t reversed soon, Lake Pend Oreille could go the way of other large Western lakes overrun by mackinaw, including Priest, Flathead and Yellowstone lakes.

On Priest Lake, for example, anglers once spent about 150,000 combined hours a year fishing for the lake’s abundant kokanee and cutthroat trout. Those two species are still present, but in much lower numbers, and the lake now attracts only about a third of the total fishing hours, Horner said.

“When it’s dominated by lake trout, fewer people fish. It becomes a very specialized fishery,” Horner said.

Dam operations have recently been altered to boost kokanee spawning success. Winter lake levels will be kept 4 feet higher this year in an attempt to provide kokanee more access to gravel spawning beds. During a trial run last year of the higher winter levels, spawning success jumped from less than 3 percent to nearly 10 percent, Horner said.

“When you’re talking potentially millions of fry, it can make all the difference in terms of kokanee recovery,” Horner said. But, he said, the extra kokanee fry might simply end up in the guts of predator fish. “All of that benefit, if you will, is getting eaten up.”

That’s why the state wants anglers to start catching and eating more rainbow and lake trout. In coming months, the Idaho Department of Fish and Game will hold meetings to discuss the situation and to help develop a strategy for saving kokanee by boosting the catch of predator fish. There is no current limit on lake trout, but anglers are limited to taking six rainbow trout per day. Kokanee fishing has been closed since 2000.

In recent years, some anglers have objected to the state’s targeting of lake and rainbow trout. Horner insisted the goal is not to eliminate the species, but merely keep them under control. If more pressure isn’t put on these exotic predator species, one of the best fisheries in the state could be permanently lost. Horner pointed to Yellowstone, where lake trout have become the equivalent of termites in a wooden mansion.

In the last decade, the national park has launched an all-out war on the fish, using nets and hooks to prevent further losses to the lake’s cutthroat population, said park spokeswoman Cheryl Matthews. A recent government study estimated that lake trout will cause about $1 billion in lost cutthroat fishing revenues over the next 30 years if the trend isn’t reversed.

The loss of native cutthroat in Yellowstone National Park is also expected to have profound impacts on 42 species that feed on the fish, including grizzly bears, white pelicans and eagles, Matthews said, citing findings from the report. The park is trying to harvest at least half the lake trout each year to prevent a total collapse of cutthroat.

“We’ll never be able to completely eliminate lake trout,” Matthews said.

Most anglers and lake lovers agree there’s trouble below the waters of Lake Pend Oreille, but there’s also some skepticism about Idaho’s push to further target predator fish, said Jim Watkins, a longtime fisherman and board member of the Lake Pend Oreille Idaho Club, a nonprofit group with about 1,000 members.

Although a 24-pound rainbow trout was caught in a fishing derby last weekend, some anglers now go 50 or 60 hours without hooking a rainbow. “It’s nothing like it used to be,” said Watkins, a Sandpoint real estate agent.

Watkins supports turning up the heat on predator species, but he doubts sport fishing could keep lake trout numbers in check on the 80,000-acre lake. The state needs to have solid evidence before it can convince anglers to put more pressure on predator species, Watkins said. “I personally don’t think they have a clue what the actual population is.”

Two years ago, commercial trap nets were used in a state effort to estimate the population of lake trout. This prompted a backlash from some lake trout anglers, who successfully lobbied the Legislature to ban future commercial fishing using nets, Watkins said. The ban has taken away an important population control tool.

“When politics drives biology, you’re not going to have success,” Watkins said.

The state hoped a commercial lake trout fishery might help keep the population in check, but federal food safety laws have made it difficult for small-scale anglers to sell their catch to restaurants and stores. Ten commercial hook-and-line fishing licenses have been issued, but so far only one license holder has gone through the expense of setting up a federally approved fish processing business.

Ron Sharp, a middle school teacher from Oakesdale, Wash., spends weekends and summers catching and smoking lake trout. He also buys lake trout from other anglers and has produced a video that he sells, in which he shares his fishing secrets. Last year, his business, Oakey Smokes, smoked 2,400 pounds of fish. It is sold for about $20 a pound at the Moscow Food Cooperative and the Country Mercantile in Pasco, Wash. The smoked mackinaw is also on the appetizer menu at Sandpoint’s Dock of the Bay Restaurant.

Lake Pend Oreille’s lake trout have a deep red flesh and taste better than “any smoked salmon,” said Sharp, who smokes his catch over wood from nearby apple orchards.

Demand for the smoked fish is high and Sharp believes he could sell upward of five tons per year, if only he had the time. “I could make as much money as I wanted – at least as much as teaching,” Sharp said. “I haven’t even scratched the market that’s out there.”

Sharp has been teaching long enough to retire in as little as three years. If the state of Idaho can wait that long, he’ll be more than happy to help with their lake trout problem.