IDFG Reports Three Times More Walleye Caught In Snake, Salmon Than In 2023

Idaho fishery managers continue to sound the alarm about walleye moving up the Snake and Salmon Rivers and say the nonnative fish “now occupy critical rearing and migratory areas of juvenile salmon and steelhead.”

IDFG reported today that where anglers caught and reported 19 walleye in the two rivers last year, they’ve received “more than 60 verified reports” from fishermen so far in 2024, probably a function of both increasing abundance of the fish and agency efforts to get the public to report their catches.

Native to the Midwest and introduced to the Upper Columbia by parties unknown decades ago, walleye have been moving up Washington’s Snake River in larger and larger numbers, and from there it appears they’ve spread into the Hells Canyon rivers.

Per IDFG, this year’s walleye ranged from 13 to 30 inches but mostly fell in the 16- to 18-inch range.

It’s assumed that more walleye are out there because of the difficulty of accessing portions of the Snake and Salmon, but state managers are not only openly asking anglers to remove them but advising them how.

“One of the best tools we have as managers that could slow the expansion of walleye are anglers,” IDFG Marika Dobos writes in a blog posted today. “Thousands of anglers fish the Snake and Salmon Rivers every year, and if they killed every walleye they caught it could slow their expansion. Most anglers encounter walleye while fishing for smallmouth bass with worms, swimbaits and soft plastics. Steelhead anglers have also started reporting catching walleye while backtrolling plugs. These fish are opportunistic fish eaters, so chances are you might encounter them with anything resembling a small fish. Some hot spots are right off sandy beaches, around islands, and in back eddies where water is slower. Most have been caught at or near the bottom at varying depths.”

Dobos is part of a new joint-agency group formed earlier this year to figure out how to manage walleye where they’re overlapping native salmon and steelhead populations.

“There are many challenges when considering walleye management strategies, but the goal of this group is to determine how big of a problem these fish are going to be, especially with other predators in the system, and to reduce walleye predation on salmon and steelhead populations where possible,” she states.

Downstream of Hells Canyon, catch data from the 2024 Northern Pikeminnow Sport Reward Fishery show that participants caught 2,075 walleye between the Snake River’s Lower Granite and Little Goose Dams, about the same number as 2023 but nearly twice as many as 2022 and 21 times as many as 2021. Unlike native pikeminnows, program anglers are not paid to kill walleye, nor smallmouth bass or other nonnative species, but their catches are tallied.

Anglers are asked to kill all walleye in rivers they catch, take a picture of the fish and send details to Dobos at marika.dobos@idfg.idaho.gov or by calling IDFG’s Lewiston office (208-750-4228).