Study explores walleye movements

By Brad Dokken, Forum Communications Co.
DEVILS LAKE, N.D. – The North Dakota Game and Fish Department’s annual campaign to collect Devils Lake walleye eggs for statewide stocking programs had a dual purpose this year. Fisheries crews also tagged 1,000 walleyes – 500 females and 500 males – by inserting small orange, numbered tags behind each fish’s dorsal fin.

According to Randy Hiltner, fisheries supervisor for Game and Fish in Devils Lake, the goal of the four-year tagging study is to shed light on walleye movements and mortality – both natural and angling.

Game and Fish will tag 1,000 additional walleyes each of the next three springs, he said. “It looks like there’s getting to be increasing angler effort and more questions” from anglers about the impact of that effort, Hiltner said. “Hopefully, our tagging study will help us answer some of those questions.” Randy Hiltner, right, fisheries supervisor for the North Dakota Game and Fish Department in Devils Lake, inserts a numbered tag like those in the foreground into a walleye May 1 on Devils Lake.

Tagging walleye This marks the first time Game and Fish has tagged walleyes in Devils Lake, Hiltner said, although the department did tag about 3,000 perch in the mid-1990s. Most of the perch were tagged near the Six-Mile Bay boat ramp, Hiltner said, the same general area Game and Fish crews tagged walleyes recently.

“We did get some information about how they moved around,” he said of the perch. “Tag returns came in from Fort Totten, and I remember some coming from East Bay. It really showed they’re not afraid to swim around the lake.” There weren’t enough tag returns to glean any statistically valid information about perch mortality rates, he said. Hiltner says anglers who catch tagged walleyes have several options for reporting the fish.

Local resorts and bait shops will have cards for anglers to fill out, and a reporting form is available on the Game and Fish Web site (www.gf.nd.gov). Anglers also can call the department’s Devils Lake office at (701) 662-3617. Game and Fish has erected signs about the tagging program at boat ramps on Devils Lake.

Anglers who plan to release a tagged fish should record the tag number, Hiltner says, but they shouldn’t remove the tag. The information Game and Fish hopes to collect is lost if the tag is removed from a fish that’s released. Keeping a tagged fish is OK, Hiltner said, but anglers still should report the results.

In return for reporting a tagged fish, Game and Fish will provide anglers with a life history of the walleye, including its size, gender and location at the time of tagging. “We’re hoping we get a lot of information from the anglers,” Hiltner said. “We’ll see what kind of returns we get.” The Forum and Grand Forks Herald are both owned by Forum Communications Co.

IMAGE INFORMATION: Gene Van Eeckhout, left, fisheries supervisor in Jamestown, assisted with the tagging of 1,000 walleyes.
Photo by Brad Dokken/Grand Forks Herald