Northwest Fishing Reports

According to this website below there are Pike in Lake Washington and Banks lake in Wash. state, and Pike in the Clearwater river in Idaho? Which is news to me and if so why is the game dept's not up in arms about it as they are in the P.O. and Columbia rivers. I think they have their facts wrong but maybe there is Pike in places I didnt know about. Here is what the sites say about pike Distribution in Wash and Idaho,
State
Idaho
Clearwater; Coeur d'Alene Lake; Lower Boise; Lower Clark Fork; Lower Kootenai; Pend Oreille; Pend Oreille Lake; Spokane; St. Joe; Upper Spokane . I know they missed a lot of Idaho waters with pike in them like Hayden, Twin, Freeman, Fernan all the Chain lakes and some others I'm sure i'm missing.
Washington
Banks Lake; Franklin D. Roosevelt Lake; Hangman; Kettle; Lake Washington; Lower Spokane; Pend Oreille

the site https://nas.er.usgs.gov/queries/factshe ... ciesID=676

Doesn’t mean there are many. They have netted Walleye as well but I have yet to personally seen one caught or talked to anyone who has.

I knew a guy at work that said he put walleye in Lake Washington. But one or 5 fish aren't going to make a large population.

Fish-N-Fool wrote:According to this website below there are Pike in Lake Washington and Banks lake in Wash. state, and Pike in the Clearwater river in Idaho? Which is news to me and if so why is the game dept's not up in arms about it as they are in the P.O. and Columbia rivers. I think they have their facts wrong but maybe there is Pike in places I didnt know about. Here is what the sites say about pike Distribution in Wash and Idaho,
State
Idaho
Clearwater; Coeur d'Alene Lake; Lower Boise; Lower Clark Fork; Lower Kootenai; Pend Oreille; Pend Oreille Lake; Spokane; St. Joe; Upper Spokane . I know they missed a lot of Idaho waters with pike in them like Hayden, Twin, Freeman, Fernan all the Chain lakes and some others I'm sure i'm missing.
Washington
Banks Lake; Franklin D. Roosevelt Lake; Hangman; Kettle; Lake Washington; Lower Spokane; Pend Oreille

the site https://nas.er.usgs.gov/queries/factshe ... ciesID=676

Rick, The lakes you say they have not mentioned are mentioned. You have to go a little deeper in the information. It the main body of the writeup, click on the highlighted "CoeurDalene Lake" spot. They are referring to the CoeurDalene Lake drainage. When you click on it, it will go deeper and show you all the lakes in that particular drainage. The Cda drainage shows all the chain lakes, and Fernan. The upper Spokane drainage shows Twin and so on.

AJ's Dad wrote: Rick, The lakes you say they have not mentioned are mentioned. You have to go a little deeper in the information. It the main body of the writeup, click on the highlighted "CoeurDalene Lake" spot. They are referring to the CoeurDalene Lake drainage. When you click on it, it will go deeper and show you all the lakes in that particular drainage. The Cda drainage shows all the chain lakes, and Fernan. The upper Spokane drainage shows Twin and so on.

Ok missed that, but they did miss some still, Bull Run in the Chain and Blue N. of Preist Riv. both have Pike.
There is also pike in some of the backwater ponds up in Cataldo. It also says there are Pike in Spirit lake which I have never heard or seen any Pile in it.

This was an interesting site you linked to, Rick. There's a detailed history of all these collections of pike. One interesting note was that there was a sample from the CDA system in 1978, listing pike as "established," and having been "accidentally stocked or illegally stocked by anglers." In a subsequent sample from 1979, the pike are listed as having been "stocked for sport." Most of the samples from the system in the following years are found to describe the source of the pike population as "stocked for sport." This would indicate a change in attribution for their origins, wouldn't it? A similar page listing Walleye distribution and populations throughout the U.S. also lists them as having been "stocked for sport," as in the John Day River in Oregon. So, the next questions I next would ask are these;

1. If Walleye and Pike were both 'stocked for sport' in rivers that feed the Columbia, why are there widespread, costly efforts to now only eradicate pike, not walleye?
2. Who stocked these fish in the first place, if they are both classified as "stocked for sport?" Did the fish and game departments originally have a hand in distributing both species?

I believe that some of these documents, as provided by USGS survey data, may muddy the waters as to the origins of these two non-native game fish in our region, as "stocked for sport" and "accidentally stocked" don't fit the description of "bucket biology," the favorite boogeyman of the fish and game.

Here is a link to a brief article of a northern pike being caught in Lake Washington back in 2017.

https://www.seattletimes.com/sports/nor ... le-salmon/