Is there a review done periodically on the status of fish in Priest Lake? How are the kokanee salmon doing? What are the levels of other fish in the lake?
Thanks for taking my question.
Answer:
Each year we count spawnng kokanee around historical shoreline spawning areas. It gives us a rough index of the adult kokanee population. This year we saw close to 30,000 fish, which is about 10 times higher than the average of the past 15 years. That's encouraging, but unfortunately, it doesn't tell us much about what to expect in coming years. We hope to use a midwater trawl survey this coming year to estimate the population of the younger age classes of kokanee. We don't have estimates of other species on the lake, but we're planning to do a large-scale lake trout population estimate in 2013-14 as well. Stay tuned.
Answered on:
Tuesday, December 4, 2012 - 2:54 PM MST