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THE DALLES, ORE. — Thomas Ogren stood on the dock at The Dalles Marina boat launch Monday, casting for Northern pikeminnow within the hopes of hooking a bit of the roughly $1 million anglers are paid annually for pulling the fish from the Columbia-Snake rivers system.
“What are you fishing for?” Ogren, 78, hollered to a passing boat.
“Same thing as you — money, money, money!” responded Wally Cole, 76.
The boys — Cole from Camas and Ogren from San Luis Obisbo, Calif. — had been two of the practically 50 individuals who turned out for the primary day of the 2025 season for the Northern Pikeminnow Sport-Reward Fishery in The Dalles.
The 34-year-old program works to scale back the numbers of the native-but-overpopulated juvenile salmon predator, defined Eric Winther, who leads this system for the Washington Division of Fish and Wildlife.
It pays anglers $6 for every of the primary 25 fish, $8 every for the following 175 fish and $10 every after that. Some tagged fish could be price $500.
That cash comes from the Bonneville Energy Administration, the federal company that sells energy produced by the federal Columbia-Snake rivers hydropower system. It’s supposed to partially mitigate the system’s dangerous impacts on salmon and steelhead.
Northern pikeminnow desire the slower, hotter river situations dams have created. Every fish can eat as many as 20 endangered salmon smolts every day.
Unsurprisingly, the reward program is in style.
Retired Wyoming cowboy, ranch supervisor, oil subject welder and excessive nation searching information Dave Eckhardt was mending from an damage in Nevada when he heard about this system a few decade in the past.
“I saw a deal on TV about this on the Sportsman Channel. I said, ‘Is that true? They pay you money to catch these fish?’ ” the grinning 64-year-old recalled.
“So I had a little workers’ comp money, and I came up here,” he stated. “The first vouchers I sent in, I thought, ‘Man, this can’t be real.’ Then, they sent me a check, and it cashed, and I thought, ‘Bingo! Here we go.’ ”
That first month he made about $1,000 fishing. Final yr, he broke $10,000 and the yr earlier than that he made about $18,000, all whereas casting from the river financial institution.
Eckhardt usually camps and fishes by Decrease Granite Dam as a result of it’s quieter. However this yr, this system opened fishing at The Dalles a pair weeks early, so he got here to test it out.
That early opening couldn’t have come at a greater time for Peter Lyubchik.
Final yr, he made about $51,000, the fourth most of any angler — and he did it whereas working full time doing upkeep at a machine store.
However, as of April 11, Lyubchik is now retired, opening his fishing schedule from simply weekends to every single day.
“I’m building a house for my daughter,” stated Lyubchik, 63. “So I need a lot of money.”
Winther stated the highest 20 anglers account for a lot of the earnings.
“Ten percent of the anglers are catching 80 percent of the fish,” he stated. “And there’s a quick drop-off. So a lot of people just go out, and they get discouraged and give up.”
However this system rewards devoted and scientific minds, who’re keen to fish generally for days on finish.
Whereas some high anglers use their earnings for investments, for a lot of different anglers, the cash principally goes to cowl the price of sort out.
One yr out of his roughly 25 on the water, Mark Helman of The Dalles made sufficient cash to take his spouse on trip to Puerto Vallarta, Mexico.
This yr, nonetheless, the semi-retired 68-year-old’s aim is to get the yard work performed so he could make it out on the river and benefit from the neighborhood he’s constructed through the years.
To Be taught Extra
Discover out extra about incomes cash by catching Northern pikeminnow at www.pikeminnow.org.
“I enjoy getting out of the house … and meeting a lot of people from all over the country,” he stated.
That neighborhood is Winther’s favourite a part of this system he manages, and he stated it has led to its success.
Throughout this system’s lifetime, anglers have pulled a median of 169,000 Northern pikeminnow from the Columbia and Snake rivers annually. (Anglers pulled 430 fish out of the river Monday. The fish can be became fertilizer.)
That complete quantity goes up partly as a result of the fish’s inhabitants has grown as situations pattern higher for them and worse for salmon. Winther famous there are “peaks and valleys” in these numbers.
However to anglers, these doubtlessly growing populations are simply positive.
Again within the car parking zone Monday afternoon, Ogren was tying on new sort out. The previous horticulture trainer writes gardening books however isn’t one to show down a day fishing within the solar.
His sort out swap got here after speaking to some native youngsters who had instantly succeeded in doing what he’d put his yearly journey to Baja, Mexico, on maintain to do: catch Northern pikeminnow.
Round that point, Cole, the boater who handed by Ogren earlier, was coming in after solely catching one.
“Maybe we’re fishing the wrong time, the wrong depth, the wrong bait, the wrong everything. I caught about 360 last year,” he stated.
However Cole stated he’s simply getting began this yr. When fishing opens on the Decrease Columbia in locations like Washougal on Could 1, he’ll be there.