My sister has a bunch of ADF&G folks at her place across the inlet doing an eradication project on pike in Tukallah Lake, Three-Mile to locals. First they caught a bunch of pike and ran a bunch of tests on a number of them but also tagged and released a bunch. By using the numbers recaptured versus the numbers tagged they should get a pretty good idea how many there were and how large a percentage they recaptured/killed.
Some very interesting things found so far..
A bunch of pike were found to be eating sockeye fry/smolts, from a run thought to have been wiped out quite a few years ago. Very good news! Silver fry/smolts have not been represented so they probably have been eliminated. The run used to be epic...
Many pike had small burbot in their guts... locals did not know there were burbot there.
Two pike were caught with baby muskrats in their guts. My brother-in-law has trapped there for years and has not seen a push-up in a decade.
They are now in the catch and kill mode with nets and have had over a 50% return on tagged fish which really surprised them. It indicates the pike population is much smaller than estimated.
