Please, go light on walleye suppression

I have fished Lake Pend Oreille (LPO) for over 50 years and I’ve experienced the highs and lows regarding the LPO fishery. Personally, I am part of the group of anglers that likes to catch and consume a variety of fish, which makes where we live such a very special place.

In my opinion trophy fish are nice, but certainly not essential for good table fare. One of my favorite fish to catch and to consume happens to be walleye.

For a number of years I and a number of other people from around here travel all the way to the Washington Columbia River system to catch walleye. I hate paying for the out-of-state license, I hate the drive and personally, I don’t even like the scenery, but … I do love to catch and eat walleye.

I, along with many others, would much rather spend our fishing time and money fishing for walleye within the LPO system instead of traveling to Washington.

Now, we have a world-class walleye fishery right here in our own backyard, which for many of us anglers is nothing more than a dream come true. I and many of my family and friends were so looking forward to fishing for walleye this spring in LPO until we read the recent press release stating that the Idaho Fish and Game (IDFG) is going to contract with Hickey Brothers Gillnetting Enterprise to net and kill walleye this spring!

I personally have watched the Hickey Brothers operation net fish and one thing is for certain, this company is extremely proficient and good at what they do. They can kill a lot of fish in a short amount of time! I assume that the IDFG will instruct the gillnetters to target walleye spawning areas in an effort to kill walleye before they have a chance to spawn.

It’s now somewhat hard to get excited about fishing for walleye in LPO knowing that the gillnetters are very soon going to be eliminating a big portion of the walleye population. The gillnetters are a tough act for fishermen to follow.

As far as I’m concerned the walleye lottery for the anglers is just a ploy and attempt to somewhat pacify the sportsman while the IDFG puts the hurt on the walleye population.

In a recent article, IDFG fishery manager Matt Corsi mentioned that currently kokanee numbers are so high in LPO that it’s adversely affecting the size of the fish and that these fish are now not available to the anglers because they are too small to catch. It just so happens that my family and friends also like to catch and eat kokanee, so fish that are too small to catch really doesn’t work very well for us or others.

It sounds obvious to me that the predatory fish along with the anglers that consume kokanee are not doing the job with controlling the kokanee numbers, yet the IDFG wants to drastically reduce the walleye numbers? The IDFG refers to this gillnetting program as a research project.

Here is my idea of a good research project. Give the sportsman a chance to control the walleye numbers within the LPO system. Put the Hickey Brothers on furlough and use the money that IDFG saves along with some additional Avista and Bonneville mitigation money that the IDFG receives and pump more bait fish into the lake, so that all the sport fish can be fat and happy.

The LPO ecosystem is plenty large enough and diversified to support a number of quality fish species. If this research project doesn’t work then the IDFG can regroup.

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Chris Hansen is an Idaho native, a long time resident of Bayview and a Lake Pend Oreille fisherman.