2022 Lake Roosevelt Fishery Highlights

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Published: Friday, 15 July 2022 17:28

Year after year, Lake Roosevelt continues to provide extraordinary and diverse angling opportunities that attract enthusiasts from near and far. Thousands of hours of angling time are happily spent catching up to 200,000 fish annually. Rainbow Trout, White Sturgeon, Walleye and Smallmouth Bass are the most targeted species. And the fight to suppress Northern Pike, a voracious predator that devastates other fish populations, provides additional angling opportunities.

At the May LRF Recreational Fishery webinar, co-managers from the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife (WDFW), the Spokane Tribe of Indians, and Colville Confederated Tribes summarized highlights for 2022. Annually, they invest over $8 million dollars to develop and maintain the fishery. In addition, the fishery contributes an estimated $16 million input to the local economies of the region.

Rainbow Trout and Net Pens

Over 561,000 rainbow trout were released into Lake Roosevelt in 2022. They are from 7 to 13 inches in length and 1 to 7 to the pound when released in May and will grow to about 18 inches by September. The long-term goal is to release up to 750,000 annually.

All rainbows released are triploids, meaning they are sterile and will not interbreed with wild trout. In addition, their adipose fin is clipped. Wild fish with an intact adipose fin should be released.

The goal is for a 5% annual return to creel, the estimated amount caught by anglers based on survey data collected by co-managers.

Supporting this effort is the WDFW Sherman Creek and Ford Hatcheries, the Spokane Tribal Hatchery, and 63 net pens located between Keller Ferry and Kettle Falls. Over 40 volunteers support maintenance of net pens and feeding needs from October through their release in May. 

Spokane Arm Rainbow Trout Supplemental Release

In 2019 the Spokane Tribal Hatchery acquired Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) funding to supplement the traditional net pen releases of rainbow trout. This has resulted in an additional 40,000 rainbow trout being released into the Spokane Arm of Lake Roosevelt each year.

The fish are released between February and June and are larger in size then those released from net pens, varying from one to two pounds. This was made possible by the tribe recommissioning an abandoned fish acclimation facility to support five raceways. Combining the Spokane Tribal Hatchery rearing abilities with utilizing the raceways enables the rainbows to finish their growth and acclimate to river conditions.  

Walleye

Since 2002, WDFW (in cooperation with the Colville and Spokane tribes) has conducted Fall Walleye Index Netting (FWIN) to monitor walleye. Monitoring enables managers to track the abundance, age, growth, condition, sex ratio, and age at maturity.

WDFW reports that the walleye fishery has remained stable and resilient over time. One consistent trend is that walleye grow more slowly in Lake Roosevelt due largely to less food availability. Another trend is that about 80% of walleye are age 3 years and younger, commonly measuring 12 to 16 inches.

Some year classes (when the walleye spawn and hatch), however, are much stronger than others. The last very strong year class was 2018. As a result, current abundance (and therefore availability) of walleye has taken a dip. However, larger walleye (16 inches to 22 inches) are currently more available because of the strong 2018 and previous year classes that are still in the system. If past is prologue, another strong year class will likely occur soon.

White Sturgeon

Since 2017, a white sturgeon fishery has been open thanks to surplus fish from U.S. and Canadian hatchery programs put in place in the early 2000s to help stem a decades-long population decline. Fishery managers believe the decline is due to on-going recruitment failure at the larval stage, the time from hatching to developing into juveniles.

Since hatchery programs began 20 years ago, over 160,000 sturgeon have been released. They are currently collected above the China Bend boat ramp at the larval stage before recruitment failure and transferred to the Sherman Creek hatchery. Here, they are raised for about one year and released in late winter/early spring.

Click here for WDFW Lake Roosevelt white sturgeon regulations. The slot limit of 50 – 63 inches fork length remains in place from 2021. New 2022 fishing regulations include no catch and release after the daily limit of one sturgeon per day has been achieved; and no sturgeon fishing from China Bend to the Canadian border will be allowed this year.

To support long term genetic diversity and other conservation goals, additional harvest changes are expected in 2023. The fishery harvest is expected to move to the fall as well as be shorter, and the slot limit will be tighter. Managers stress they are committed to annual stocking and maintaining a harvest. They are very pleased with the success of conservation efforts and what has become a very popular recreational fishery.

Northern Pike

This non-native invasive species is a voracious predator that devastates other fish populations. Northern pike can prey on fish that are 75% of their body weight and reproduce quickly. Managers, for instance, have caught females that are up to 26 lbs., each carrying about 127,000 eggs. Over the course of suppression efforts, 8,800 females have been removed with an estimated 442 million eggs.

In addition to threatening trout and other Lake Roosevelt fisheries, they can potentially move down the Columbia River and to other waterbodies like Banks Lake, thus threatening salmon, steelhead and other fisheries.

Suppression efforts, which include multiple strategies from gillnetting to offering rewards for their capture, are currently showing promising results. The number of fish caught per net is down from 4.37 in 2017 to 0.46 in 2021. In addition, nine eDNA monitoring sites changed from positive pike detections to negative 2021. Their primary pike location is concentrated in the northern section of the lake, e.g.—from Gifford to the Canadian border.

Click here to learn more about the northern pike reward program.