Farm Bureaus Abruptly Cancel ‘Walleye Jackpot’ On Snake

Updated: 6:40 p.m., January 18, 2024

Two Northwest agriculture-oriented organizations announced this week that they planned to hold a “Farmers for Salmon: Walleye Jackpot” in mid-March on the Snake, then just as abruptly cancelled it today.

The Idaho and Washington Farm Bureau Federations were going to hold the catch-and-kill event out of Lyons Ferry near Starbuck on Saturday, March 16 and were offering “$5,000 in cash prizes” to those paying the $100 registration fee.

But late this afternoon Idaho’s bureau posted that the “Walleye Jackpot has been canceled until further notice.”

During its short life, the event led to a headache-inducing dive into the Washington Administrative Codes as they apply to state angling tournaments.

WDFW Warmwater Enhancement Program Manager Kenny Behen said his phone blew up over the past day as WDFW enforcement officers and anglers got wind of the shindig and the farm bureau reached out for what they might need for state sign-off.

But the bottom line is that the way they described their event and its rules meant that it did not meet the criteria for requiring a WDFW permit to hold it, wardens concluded, he said.

With no winner expected to be declared, no cash payouts given out based on catch weight, and prizes to be awarded via a ticket drawing, the event apparently didn’t qualify as a contest.

Behen says it took advantage of something of a loophole in the WACs, which are centered around tournament participants ultimately releasing all of their walleye and bass after weigh-in. Events with greater than 90 percent fish survival can offer much higher paydays and prizes than the $5,000 cap on other species. But if mortality rates exceed more than 10 percent any given day of the tourney, fishing could be suspended the next.

While the “Farmers for Salmon: Walleye Jackpot” has now wilted on the vine, as it were, it did come as increasing numbers of the nonnative species have been moving up the Snake in recent years, “alarming” Washington, Idaho and tribal fishery managers concerned about predation on Endangered Species Act-listed Chinook, coho, sockeye and summer steelhead smolts they’re trying to protect and recover.

Evidence of the growing walleye population in the Snake can be seen in Northern Pikeminnow Sport-Reward Program participants’ incidental catches. Last year saw an 80 percent increase at Lower Granite Dam over 2022, with 2,085 checked in at the Boyer Park Station compared to 1,152 the previous season – which itself was a 12-fold increase over 2021’s catch. No bounty is currently paid for walleye.

The Snake and its tribs below the fish-ladderless Hells Canyon dams represent much of the available best remaining spawning and rearing habitat for salmon and steelhead, and a Lewiston Tribune article last summer spoke to the potential risk of walleye occurring in those same areas instead of just migratory corridors like the mainstem, where the young fish represent a here-and-gone annual meal.

WDFW’s Behen said that the Walleye Jackpot wouldn’t really concern regional fish managers because the agency’s policy already is that there are no limits or size restrictions on walleye harvest on the Snake and that its nonnative fish policy prioritizes the river for native anadromous species.

He said that this appears to be the first time the Farm Bureaus have held a fishing event and while he wasn’t sure why, he noted this one included a conservation component in equating the lethal removal of walleye with salmon and steelhead survival. He suggested it might send a message that ag interests are concerned about Chinook and other stocks.

The Walleye Jackpot also arrived as a major federal-state-tribal-nonprofit agreement was announced in mid-December on a long-running court case around hydropower operations on the Snake and Columbia and their impact on listed salmonids. Ag interests such as the Washington Farm Bureau “strongly oppose” the deal, which sets the stage for potentially breaching the lower Snake dams should Congress agree.

A free-flowing Snake might slow the upstream push of walleye too, while focusing on reducing water temperatures by improving streamside habitat and buffers would help salmon and steelhead.

The jackpot would have been held out of Lyons Ferry Marina.