Commission taking up kokanee harvest hike

SANDPOINT — The Idaho Department of Fish & Game is moving ahead with a proposal to increase the harvest limit for kokanee on Lake Pend Oreille.

The kokanee bag limit would increase from six to 15 fish if the rule change is accepted by the Idaho Fish & Game Commission at its quarterly business meeting on Thursday in Lewiston.

The department called for public comment on the regulation change last month and the vast majority of those who responded supported raising the harvest limit, said Jim Fredericks, Fish & Game’s Panhandle fisheries manager.

“People said, ‘If the population can support it, then by all means do it.’ It was kind of common theme,” Fredericks said on Tuesday.

A few of the nearly 40 respondents, however, urged Fish & Game to hold off on recommending the rule change until it’s certain that the kokanee population can sustain increased harvest.

But Fredericks said the department is confident that the population can support the bag-limit increase.

Last fall, an estimated 1.2 million mature kokanee survived to spawn, making it one of the highest spawner returns in the past 40 years and a four-fold increase from 2012.

Rough estimates of this year’s spawning population are in excess of 2 million, according to Fredericks, who said a firmer numbers are expected this summer.

“It’s a very healthy population at this point,” he said.

Fish & Game closed the kokanee fishery to harvest in 2000, after the population began its steep nosedive in mid-1990s. An aggressive program to reduce predators — lake trout and rainbow trout — with netting and harvest incentives was implemented in 2006.

Pend Oreille kokanee reached its nadir in 2007, when the estimated biomass was barely more than 100 tons. The estimated biomass was approximately 385 tons in 1996, according to Fish & Game figures.

The fishery reopened to harvest last year.

Fredericks said he is not aware of any other predation-imperiled kokanee populations which have been successfully pulled back from the brink of collapse.

A cash incentive for harvesting lake trout remains in effect and netting will persist, although Fredericks said it will likely be scaled back in the future.

“In all likelihood, there will be some level of netting that’s going to have to be continued,” said Fredericks.

If the commission adopts the rule change, it would go into effect immediately.