IFG cautiously optimistic on fisheries

SANDPOINT — Getting us back to Kansas from Oz was world-renowned fishing expert Mike Hansen’s analogy for the goal of reviving the kokanee population and restoring the world-class trophy rainbows trout to Lake Pend Oreille at Wednesday night’s “state of the lake”address.

Since 2006 the lake trout population has been intentionally depleted by an Angler Incentive Program (bounty) and by gill and trap netting. The goal to collapse the lake trout population is necessary to prevent these predators from taking over the lake and jeopardizing the native bull trout and cutthroat populations as well as depleting the kokanee and threatening the rainbow.

“We all know how to get back to Kansas,” he told the roughly 50 attendees. “You just click your heels three times.” He then acknowledged that it has taken much more than luck to get the fishery to where it is today and where it needs to go in the future.

In 2006, Hansen made many statistical projections about the fishery. “The way it happens in nature, however, is different than what’s predicted by a computer,” he said. His original assessment of the likelihood of successfully managing the fishery was not as optimistic as the results that were reported at the meeting.

IFG is conducting fish estimates, regional fishery biologist Andy Dux said the last population counts were done in 2008. But, to illustrate how the lake trout have declined he showed that abundance levels decreased by over 20,000 fish from 2006 to 2008.

The Angler Incentive Program that pays anglers $15 for turning in the heads of lake trout of any size and rainbow over 13 inches long has been an key part of the fishery management, Dux said.

IFG is seeing a decrease in the size of the fish caught both by anglers and in the nets and in their numbers, he said. Most of the lake trout are in the 16 to 25 inch range, the rainbows run 13 to 18 inches.

Statistics on the number of lake trout taken by both anglers and nets has decreased since 2008 when 13,020 fish were caught by rod and reel and 11,761 were netted. In 2011 fishers caught 7,032 fish and 10,850 were trapped in nets. Overall, since the program started in 2006 almost 133,000 lake trout have been removed.

Rainbows are not trapped in nets; depletion of the population is dependent on anglers. However, the number of rainbow have sustained albeit the fish are much smaller.

“The population estimate is almost identical,” Dux said. “We have not seen a major change in population despite the Angler Incentive Program.”

Jim Fredericks, Regional Fishery Manager, said that IFG is looking at whether or not to change the rules next year.  He said that the Angler Incentive Program would continue for lake trout and rainbow through 2012.

“The bounty on lake trout will continue for the foreseeable future, but we’ll look at the rainbow in 2013,” he said. “We’ll also continue gill netting for 15 weeks in the winter/spring season and again for 15 weeks in the fall, targeting the spawning areas.”

“The question is, are we ready for a different management scheme for rainbow?” Fredericks said. IFG will use Hansen’s research and public input to make decisions. He gestured the audience and said that the intelligence they could bring forward will help in the process.

Now through May, IFG will be scoping out the possibilities with a series of public meetings, talking to anglers and basically fact finding. The proposed rules will go before the Fish and Wild Life Commission in July who’ll vote at their November meeting with the new rules in effect in January 2013.

Among the proposals are reviving a limited kokanee harvest, contingent on population surveys, at around the six fish rate; putting a daily limit on rainbow, and implementing a limited harvest of bull trout, Fredericks said.

A public input meeting is scheduled for Tuesday, March 13, at the Panhandle Health Building, 322 Marion St., from 7-9 p.m. This meeting will also cover regulations for Priest Lake as well as Pend Oreille. Anglers who cannot attend but want to give input can contact Fredericks at jim.fredericks@IFG.idaho.gov or 208-769-1414.