Officials expect big eyes !

[Lee Borgersen]

 

Officials expecting big, healthy walleyes next year

Wednesday, August 26, 2015

  .......
Lake herring and smelt populations are up data shows and walleyes are taking advantage.

With salmon fever gripping the lower reaches of Lake Oahe, the reservoir’s most popular game fish, the walleye, is quietly working its way out of the post 2011 flood funk that has kept fish sizes down for four years.

  Da scoop .......
The flood decimated the lake’s rainbow smelt population, which the 20-inch plus walleyes that made Oahe famous relied on as a food source. That caused sharp declines in the number of larger walleyes in the lake and may have led to slower growth in Lake Oahe’s younger walleyes.

That pattern continued for a few years thanks to a drought in 2012 and falling spring water conditions in 2013. Rainbow smelt spawn in the spring and lay their eggs in very shallow water. Their eggs can be left high and dry if water levels fall in the spring.

Last year high numbers of lake herring were found in the lake. That appears to have contributed to the size and health of chinook salmon and, according to Game, Fish and Parks Senior Fisheries Biologist Mark Fincel, a bump in the size and health of Lake Oahe’s walleye.

“The condition of the walleyes is excellent,” he said.

Biologists have recently concluded their annual gill netting surveys on Lake Oahe and the fish they caught, Fincel said, were all pretty healthy fish. Most were in the 15 to 16 inch size range, he said, which is about what biologists expected to see.

“They’ve got a lot of fat reserves,” Fincel said.

The number of walleyes in the lake appears to be down however, Fincel said, but given the near record number of fish born in 2009 the lower numbers aren’t a big concern. 

The annual bait fish surveys also were finished recently, Fincel said, and they too had good news for anglers. Both the acoustic sounding and deepwater netting surveys appear to show strong numbers of rainbow smelt and age zero lake herring. That means this year’s 16-inch walleyes will have plenty of fatty bait to feed up on through the fall and the winter, Fincel said.

“There will be some toads next year,” he said of the walleye population.

The large 2009 year class will most likely start entering the 18 to 19 inch range by next spring Fincel said.

 
Walleye

Game, Fish and Parks intern Jenna Schweiss holds a walleye caught in a gill net on Wednesday Aug. 6, 2014.

[attachment deleted by admin]