Pikeminnow Bounty Program To End Slightly Early After ‘Outstanding Year Of Fishing’

The pikeminnow bounty program on the Columbia and Snake Rivers will wrap up a handful of days early next week as managers say that the available funding for the May-September season will have been distributed to participating anglers.

“Attention anglers: the 2024 Pikeminnow Sport-Reward Fishery Season will close five days early due to the $1.7 million Pikeminnow reward fund being reached by September 25. The last day of the season will be September 25th. Thanks for a great season!” a brief message on the program’s Facebook page this afternoon states.

The program pays fishermen from $6 to $10 per qualifying pikeminnow, a native salmon smolt predator that has an outsized impact on outmigrating young Chinook, coho and steelhead in the still-water reservoirs of the Columbia and Snake hydropower system. Specially tagged fish are worth $500.

Angling begins May 1 and typically runs through September 30. Funding comes from the Bonneville Power Administration.

Catch data emailed out earlier this week by WDFW’s Eric Winther shows that through September 15, 164,456 of the fish have been turned in for payment by anglers. That’s the most since the 2018 season and the 18th largest annual take going back to the early 1990s’ beginning of the program.

Of note, this year’s top angler has earned an eye-popping $159,760 by turning in 15,800 fish. That’s likely the most ever in both categories; the next closest haul was $119,341 for 14,019 fish by a 2016 fisherman.

Last year’s top 20 anglers accounted for 52 percent of the catch and 53.8 percent of bounty payments, according to the program’s annual report.

The goal isn’t to catch all the pikeminnow but to structure the population to achieve lower predation rates on salmonids. The program has met its goal of removing 10 to 20 percent of the fish in the open area – from the mouth of the Columbia up to Priest Rapids Dam and on the Snake from its mouth to Hells Canyon Dam – since its inception.

Managers termed 2024 an “outstanding season of fishing.”

“We want to extend a warm thank you to all participants for being a part of the program, and helping out the salmon population for another year,” they stated on pikeminnow.org.