Northern Pike

Northern pike in Washington? Yep, they are here and their numbers are exploding. Some goofball transplanted them into Newman Lake, but that's not the real concern. They have established themselves as the top predator in the Pend Oreille River.

At yesterday's Inland Fish Policy Advisory Group meeting in Ephrata, Bruce Bolding of WDFW outlined the facts. In summary, northern pike, flushed out of the Clark Fork through the Lake Pend Oreille and over Albeni Falls Dam, have found the Box Canyon portion of the Pend Oreille River to be a lovely home. To get some sense of the numbers, in 2004 there were roughly 400 adult pike in the river. In 2009, that number mushroomed to 7500. At the same time, the numbers of the resident fish populations, (save one) have shown marked decreases.

Initially the biologists thought the fish were confined to the southern half of Box Canyon. Not so as the fish have moved downstream into Boundary Pool as well. In a recent bass tournament on Boundary Pool, every angler caught pike.

So what's the problem you might say? Impact on native fish and salmonids in particular. Over the next number of years, roughly $500 million will be spent improving fish passage over Boundary, Box Canyon and Albeni Falls dams and restoring native cutthroat and bull trout populations. A future concern is further spread downstream into the Columbia River and the potential havoc to be wreaked on salmon and steelhead populations.


These fish present a terrific catch and keep fishing opportunity as there is no limit and no minimize size. Forget the catch and release ethic (this coming from the guy who released all but one pink salmon last year), every one says pike fillets are quite tasty