Anglers can receives a commission to fish for Northern pikeminnow beginning Thursday at websites alongside the Columbia and Snake rivers, together with the Kalama Marina, Ridgefield Marina and the boat ramp on the Port of Camas-Washougal.
The funds — which totaled the higher a part of $2 million final yr — are to encourage fishers to catch the native-but-overpopulated juvenile salmon predator. That cash comes from the Northern Pikeminnow Sport-Reward Program, which is funded by Bonneville Energy Administration.
BPA sells energy produced by the federal Columbia-Snake rivers hydropower system and pays for the Northern pikeminnow program to mitigate the hurt to salmon and steelhead trigger by dams.
Columbia and Snake River dams generate tons of of tens of millions of {dollars} in energy every year however sluggish and heat the rivers, creating circumstances that favor the Northern pikeminnow over endangered salmon and steelhead.
Every pikeminnow can eat as many as 20 younger salmon per day.
To struggle that, this system 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.
Final yr, one angler made $164,000, though most solely earn a fraction of that.
This system has 25 websites for dropping off fish alongside the Columbia and Snake rivers. That features a handful of websites alongside the decrease Columbia in Southwest Washington.
All fish should be longer than 9 inches. And anglers should have a fishing license and register in particular person or on this system’s cellular app forward of every day they fish.
A full listing of laws, drop websites and useful how-to ideas could be discovered at www.pikeminnow.org.
Washington Division of Fish and Wildlife spokesman Britton Ransford famous that fishing at these decrease Columbia websites usually heats up because the season progresses.
Whereas Thursday marks the beginning of the official season, this yr this system opened some choose websites earlier, drawing a spread of colourful characters looking for their share of the payouts.
The season is about to finish Sept. 30, Ransford mentioned.
