NORTH DAKOTA OUTDOORS MAGAZINE

Fishing for Answers in Fall

Ron Wilson

A nice yellow perch netted in fall by Game and Fish Department fisheries biologists.

At the time of year when most anglers have swapped fishing rods for shotguns, North Dakota Game and Fish Department fisheries personnel are still fishing.

As part of the Department’s management of the many fisheries around the state, biologists sample young-of-the-year fish — from walleye to yellow perch, to bluegill, and so on — with a variety of nets in fall to assess the survival of stocked and naturally reproduced fish based on the number and sizes of fish caught.

“When we do our fall reproduction surveys, we typically use a combination of small, mesh gill nets that are designed to capture those smaller fish.

And those gill nets tend to be really effective at sampling this year’s young-of-the-year walleye and perch, in particular,” said Paul Bailey, Department south central fisheries supervisor in Bismarck.

“We also set some trap nets which can catch some walleye and perch but are typically better designed to sample our primary forage base, fathead minnows, in many of our lakes.”

Scott Gangl, Department fisheries management section leader, said the results of this fall’s survey efforts were kind of all over the board.

“Most years, we’ll see a pattern statewide where conditions were really good or conditions were really bad, but this year we’re not seeing any real consistent patterns with reproduction,” Gangl said.

“Some of our walleye lakes have been good, some have been bad.

What we’re seeing is probably a lot of the simpler fish communities in our newer lakes that just have, say, walleye and maybe some perch in them, they seem to have done pretty well this year in terms of stocking success.

Or, in a few cases, we’ve seen some natural reproduction, but we’re not seeing that consistently across the state.”

The same holds true for every other species, too.

Paul Bailey measures fish netted during fall reproduction survey efforts to assess the survival of stocked and naturally reproduced fish.

Bailey measures fish netted during fall reproduction survey efforts to assess the survival of stocked and naturally reproduced fish.

Fisheries biologists are seeing some panfish reproduction, but not great.

They’re seeing some yellow perch production in some places, but not everywhere.

Even so, the good news is 2023 was a really good year across the state.

That was one of those years fisheries biologists did see a pattern and it was really consistent with really good reproduction and stocking success across the state.

“What you typically find is when you have a good year-class one year, the next year it’s a little bit more suppressed,” Gangl said.

“And so, we’re not too concerned about any of the lakes that didn’t do well this year.

It’s just part of the cycle where we had good reproduction and stocking last year.”

Biologists measure and count the fish after they are netted.

By assessing the lengths of the fish, it provides fisheries managers insight into the growing conditions in the lake since those fish were either stocked or naturally reproduced.

“The larger these fish are into the fall, usually the better assured we are that these fish are going to recruit to that population and produce for anglers down the road,” Bailey said.

Gangl said the Department has a priority system when it comes to sampling fish and fisheries biologists try to get to those priority waters — lakes Oahe, Sakakawea and Devils Lake — every year.

But the work doesn’t stop there as fisheries biologists do sample as many of the 400-plus waters as possible across North Dakota.

“What biologists are finding tells us a little bit about where we’ve seen success this year, where we might need to add a few more fish next year, where we might need to rein it in a little bit and maybe not stock so many fish in spring if the forage base isn’t looking good,” Gangl said.

“This is really important information to get in the fall right before we go into winter and we’re making those management decisions for a lot of our lakes.”

Concerning those priority waters, Gangl said fisheries biologists did see a pretty good catch of young walleye on Devils Lake, probably a little above average over the long-term.

“Lake Sakakawea is an interesting one because biologist didn’t see good numbers of young walleye, but they saw young-of-the-year throughout the reservoir,” Gangl said.

Paul Bailey, Game and Fish Department south central fisheries supervisor in Bismarck, with a healthy West Lake Napoleon walleye.

“That’s interesting because we didn’t stock Lake Sakakawea with walleye this year and so that’s all natural reproduction.

We didn’t stock it this year because we’ve had a few good years of reproduction, and once you start seeing those young year-classes building up, we want to take a year off every now and then and let the forage base kind of catch up so there’s enough food for everything to continue to grow and survive.”

Gangl said Lake Oahe had fairly good walleye reproduction this year, but the better news was the possibility of an increase in the reservoir’s forage base, which hasn’t been a bright spot for years.

“We have a lot of different forages on Lake Oahe, and we look at things like emerald shiners, young-of-the-year crappie, young-of-the-year white bass, anything smaller than six inches could be a meal for a walleye, pike, catfish or any game fish down there,” he said.

“We didn’t see particularly good numbers of most of those alternate forages, but we did see some gizzard shad reproduction this year, which is good because that was a primary forage base back in the late 2000s.

When we get some cold weather, they don’t really survive the winters very well.

But when you have a mild winter like we did last winter, we see the adults survive.

They can reproduce and those young gizzard shad provide really good forage for game fish.

If we have a couple more decent winters where they can survive, we might see some buildup of forage on Oahe again this year.”

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