By Gavin Aguilar – Fisheries Technician
Payette Lake in McCall is a deep, cold natural lake that has supported a kokanee fishery for well over a century. In fact, kokanee and their anadromous cousins, sockeye salmon, are native to Payette Lake, and historical documents suggest that commercial fisheries on Payette Lake from 1870 to 1880 harvested up to 75,000 kokanee and sockeye, combined, per year. Sockeye were eliminated entirely from the Payette drainage in the early 1920s when Black Canyon Dam was built, but kokanee still exist in the lake today.
Young angler with a Payette kokanee.
Throughout the last several decades, kokanee abundance in Payette Lake has gone through periods of ups and downs. In the mid-2000s, the kokanee fishery began a rapid decline when lake trout, a top predator first introduced in the 1950s, dramatically increased. Despite continuing to stock 400,000 kokanee fingerlings annually between 2007 and 2014, the kokanee fishery collapsed. As a result, lake trout body condition declined to an all-time low as they ran out of food and were starving. The fishery became comprised of mostly a bunch of skinny, emaciated lake trout.
The kokanee collapse in the mid-2000s led to a series of public meetings to determine a path forward for managing Payette Lake. With input from anglers, Fish and Game made a plan to reduce numbers of lake trout so kokanee survival rates would improve, and the remaining lake trout in the lake would be healthier.
Beginning in 2014, Fish and Game biologists started using gill nets to annually reduce lake trout abundance in Payette Lake, to improve kokanee survival.
Trophy-size Payette Lake lake trout
Mature adult lake trout are being tagged and released for anglers to catch later on - some with $50 reward tags. Anglers who catch lake trout with a visible tag are asked to report them to Fish and Game. In 2022, Fish and Game staff released 33 lake trout over 27-inches long back into the lake during netting efforts. The largest was nearly 43 inches.
More than 2,500 lake trout have been removed from Payette Lake since 2014. When they are captured in gill nets, lake trout larger than 27 inches are tagged and released, and all lake trout less than 27 inches are euthanized. The majority of the lake trout caught are between 6 to 10 years old (12 to 23 inches), which are the fish being targeted for suppression. Lake trout in Payette Lake have been documented living up to 40 years old.
By 2020, enough progress was being made that Fish and Game resumed stocking 400,000 kokanee fingerlings annually in Payette Lake, and kokanee abundance responded. With more prey available and less competition for it, lake trout are improving as well.
“We’re not seeing skinny 30-inch fish anymore,” said McCall Fisheries Biologist, Mike Thomas. “All of the larger lake trout we’re catching seem to be fat and healthy these days.”
In late summer of 2022, Thomas and colleagues took this program one step even further. For the first time in 30 years, Fish and Game staff operated a temporary picket weir on the North Fork Payette River above Payette Lake to capture kokanee returning to spawn from Payette Lake.
Kokanee weir on the North Fork Payette River, above Payette Lake, in September 2022.
At the weir, staff sorted males and females into holding boxes, and passed approximately 50% of the run upstream to spawn naturally.
“A large number of fish also spawned naturally below the weir," said Thomas. “Probably about a thousand or so."
About 500,000 fertilized eggs were sent to Cabinet Gorge Fish Hatchery in northern Idaho, where they will be hatched and raised to about 3 to 4-inch fish with the majority of them to be stocked back into Payette Lake to continue boosting the fishery.
Fish and Game staff spawning kokanee on the North Fork Payette River in 2022.
The kokanee being reared at Cabinet Gorge Fish Hatchery will be marked so they will be distinguishable to Thomas and his crews conducting future kokanee surveys on Payette Lake. This will allow biologists to determine the relative success of this effort, versus just allowing the entire population to spawn naturally.
“It's no secret that the kokanee on Payette Lake are relatively large right now," said Thomas. “While some spawning adults are over 20 inches, the majority are between 14-18 inches. If we're successful in recovering this fishery, numbers will continue to increase and with that, average size will decrease slightly."
It's the age-old balance between quantity and quality because you can't have an unlimited number of fish and expect them all to be big because the lake has limited food for kokanee.
"We're hoping to get to a point where anglers can expect high catch rates of 12 to 14-inch kokanee," Thomas said. "We will be conducting a creel survey in 2023 to determine how much effort and harvest is occurring as this fishery continues to recover. This information will be useful in addition to fish population survey data to guide future management actions.”
A big Payette Lake kokanee caught in summer 2022.
Other Idaho lakes have shown that when kokanee rebound, the fish that prey on them – in this case lake trout – also benefit.
"We know some anglers weren't excited about the idea of reducing lake trout abundance on Payette," said Thomas, "but it's evident this was the right move. We've created a kokanee fishery and brought the lake trout population back into somewhat of a balance with its preferred prey source. We're not where we want to be yet, but we're making progress."
Anglers have also been catching more rainbow trout in recent years in Payette Lake, which have been showing great quality flesh for table fare.
The current daily bag limit for kokanee salmon on Payette Lake is six per day per angler. Lake trout are included in the combined daily limit for all trout (six per day per person). Rainbow trout are also included in the combined daily limit for all trout. For more information on Payette Lake or other fisheries in the McCall subregion, contact the McCall Fish and Game office at (208) 634-8137, Regional Fisheries Biologist mike.thomas@idfg.idaho.gov or Regional Fisheries Manager jordan.messner@idfg.idaho.gov