A friend of mine in the Western USA just sent me this article which was posted on County10.com It is very important to not introduce any non-native fish or organism to any body of water. Lake Erie has been a similar victim recently with the introduction of the round goby and other fish like the white perch.
A photo posted on
County10.com Tuesday morning of a Pavillion angler and the Northern Pike
he caught in Ocean Lake on his birthday has confirmed the worst fears of
the Wyoming Game and Fish Department.
“We heard about a
northern being caught in Ocean last winter, but we were never able to put our hands
on the fish, so this is the first official confirmation that northern are in
there,” said Craig Amadio, WGFD fisheries biologist in Lander. “Northern Pike
are very aggressive that require a lot of food. There are suckers, carp and
such in the lake for them to eat, but with a predator like that our big concern
is they could escape and establish themselves in other waters, we want to keep
them out of Boysen.”Amadio said people don’t realize how easily fish can move around.
“We’ve been managing Ocean Lake for walleye, which is another top predator,
and to have two top predators in the lake is not good for what we want to
do there,” he said. The fisheries biologist said that because northern are such
voracious eaters, they don’t do well in Wyoming waters because there are
usually not enough fish to sustain them.
Amadio praised the
angler, Russell Naef (above), for keeping the fish intact and calling in
when the G&F reposted in comments on the photo reaching out to him.
“We want to get the otoliths from the fish (inner earbone) because we can tell
how old the fish is as otoliths grow in rings, and they retain the
chemical signature of the water they grew up in, so we can tell where it
came from when it was young,” he said.
“We have to assume
there are more of them in Ocean Lake. If any other angler catches one, we’d
like them not to release it back into the water, but kill it and keep the head
so we can harvest the otoliths,” he said. “These northern are a threat to our
entire fishery out there.”
Amadio, who came to
Lander from Green River, said he’s had experience at Flaming Gorge when Burbot
first showed up there. “We manage that for lake trout and kokanee salmon, but
the burbot are also top predators and they’ve had a negative impact there.”
He said it’s way too
early to know how the northern got into Ocean Lake in the first place.
Northern Pike. h/t
Photo WGFD / Pitchengine Communities
