Over 180,000 salmon-eating northern pikeminnow were caught in the Columbia and Snake rivers over a five-month fishing season that ran from May 1 through September 30, 2018.
The 2018 Northern Pikeminnow Sport Reward Program incentivized people to catch the fish, which eat millions of young salmon each year.
The program, funded by the Bonneville Power Administration, has been running since 1990 and pays anglers for each pikeminnow caught.
“The goal of this program is to reduce the number of northern pikeminnow in the Columbia and Snake rivers,” said Eric McOmie, BPA program manager. “We’ve seen a substantial reduction in predation by these fish, which mean young salmon and steelhead have a better chance of making it to the ocean and eventually returning to the basin as adults.”
The program pays anglers $5 to $8 per fish that measures over 9 inches long. Over 1,000 specially tagged pikeminnow released by state fish and wildlife biologists in 2018 were worth $500 each.
Overall, anglers were paid a combined $1.4 million after catching a total of 180,271 pikeminnows. Each year BPA aims to remove 10-20 percent of northern pikeminnow. This year 11.5 percent were removed.
The average payment among the top 20 fishermen was $29,000 each. The top angler was paid a total of $71,000.
Since the program began over 5 million northern pikeminnows have been removed from the Columbia and Snake rivers, reducing the predation on young salmon and steelhead by a total of over 40 percent.
