There’s a lot going on with me today. It’s my daughter’s birthday (I actually chose this date). It’s Cinco de Mayo, a Mexican special day that is celebrated pretty much worldwide. Today I am in Kettle Falls and going out on a boat that is retrieving gillnets that were set earlier in the week to catch northern pike in Lake Roosevelt. This is the All Hands week on Roosevelt, when Chelan PUD, the Colville Tribe and other tribes and agencies gather to harvest as many northern pike as possible. These voracious predators are now present in Lake Roosevelt in significant numbers and there is a serious effort to suppress the spread of this species. I went out on the Spokane tribe’s boat two years ago and learned a lot about where the gillnets are placed to be most effective. The combined effort during the All Hands week resulted in the removal of about 400 northern pike if my memory serves me. How important is this suppression effort? One female northern pike that weighed over 20 pounds had 300,000 eggs! If these fish made it down the Columbia below Chief Joseph Dam they could be a serious threat to our salmon and steelhead.
Bill Towey with the Chelan PUD holds up one of the northern pike taken by gillnet on Lake Roosevelt.