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Anglers Descend on the Gorge to Get Piece of $1.7 Million Northern Pikeminnow Payouts by Henry Brannan The Columbian, April 16, 2025

The season opens in Southwest Washington on May 1.
Unsurprisingly, the reward program is popular.

THE DALLES, ORE. -- Thomas Ogren stood on the dock at The Dalles Marina boat launch Monday, casting for Northern pikeminnow in the hopes of hooking a piece of the roughly $1.7 million anglers are paid each year for pulling the fish from the Columbia-Snake rivers system.

"What are you fishing for?" Ogren, 78, hollered to a passing boat.

"Same thing as you -- money, money, money!" responded Wally Cole, 76.

The men -- Cole from Camas and Ogren from San Luis Obisbo, Calif. -- were two of the nearly 50 people who turned out for the first day of the 2025 season for the Northern Pikeminnow Sport-Reward Fishery in The Dalles.

The 34-year-old program works to reduce the numbers of the native-but-overpopulated juvenile salmon predator, explained Eric Winther, who leads the program for the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife.

It pays anglers $6 for each of the first 25 fish, $8 each for the next 175 fish and $10 each after that. Some tagged fish can be worth $500.

That money comes from the Bonneville Power Administration, the federal agency that sells power produced by the federal Columbia-Snake rivers hydropower system. It's intended to partly mitigate the system's harmful impacts on salmon and steelhead.

Northern pikeminnow prefer the slower, warmer river conditions dams have created. Each fish can eat as many as 20 endangered salmon smolts each day.

Unsurprisingly, the reward program is popular.

"We get calls and emails and so on from all over the country, and some of those actually trek out here," Winther said. "I've talked to people from the Great Lakes area, talked to people from Arizona, East Coast -- and not all of them show up, but some of them come out and do really well."

Retired Wyoming cowboy, ranch manager, oil field welder and high country hunting guide Dave Eckhardt was mending from an injury in Nevada when he heard about the program about a decade ago.

"I saw a deal on TV about this on the Sportsman Channel. I said, ‘Is that true? They pay you money to catch these fish?' " the grinning 64-year-old recalled.

"So I had a little workers' comp money, and I came up here," he said. "The first vouchers I sent in, I thought, ‘Man, this can't be real.' Then, they sent me a check, and it cashed, and I thought, ‘Bingo! Here we go.' "

That first month he made about $1,000 fishing. Last year, he broke $10,000 and the year before that he made about $18,000, all while casting from the river bank.

Eckhardt normally camps and fishes by Lower Granite Dam because it's quieter. But this year, the program opened fishing at The Dalles a couple weeks early, so he came to check it out.

That early opening couldn't have come at a better time for Peter Lyubchik.

Last year, he made about $51,000, the fourth most of any angler -- and he did it while working full time doing maintenance at a machine shop.

But, as of April 11, Lyubchik is now retired, opening his fishing schedule from just weekends to every day.

"I'm building a house for my daughter," said Lyubchik, 63. "So I need a lot of money."

Winther said the top 20 anglers account for most of the earnings.

"Ten percent of the anglers are catching 80 percent of the fish," he said. "And there's a quick drop-off. So a lot of people just go out, and they get discouraged and give up."

But the program rewards dedicated and scientific minds, who are willing to fish sometimes for days on end.

While some top anglers use their earnings for investments, for many other anglers, the money mostly goes to cover the cost of tackle.

One year out of his roughly 25 on the water, Mark Helman of The Dalles made enough money to take his wife on vacation to Puerto Vallarta, Mexico.

This year, however, the semi-retired 68-year-old's goal is to get the yard work done so he can make it out on the river and enjoy the community he's built over the years.

But the program rewards dedicated and scientific minds, who are willing to fish sometimes for days on end.

While some top anglers use their earnings for investments, for many other anglers, the money mostly goes to cover the cost of tackle.

One year out of his roughly 25 on the water, Mark Helman of The Dalles made enough money to take his wife on vacation to Puerto Vallarta, Mexico.

This year, however, the semi-retired 68-year-old's goal is to get the yard work done so he can make it out on the river and enjoy the community he's built over the years.

But to anglers, those potentially increasing populations are just fine.

Back in the parking lot Monday afternoon, Ogren was tying on new tackle. The former horticulture teacher writes gardening books but isn't one to turn down a day fishing in the sun.

His tackle swap came after talking to some local kids who had immediately succeeded in doing what he'd put his yearly trip to Baja, Mexico, on hold to do: catch Northern pikeminnow.

Around that time, Cole, the boater who passed by Ogren earlier, was coming in after only catching one.

"Maybe we're fishing the wrong time, the wrong depth, the wrong bait, the wrong everything. I caught about 360 last year," he said.

But to anglers, those potentially increasing populations are just fine.But Cole said he's just getting started this year. When fishing opens on the Lower Columbia in places like Washougal on May 1, he'll be there.

Related Pages:
Wanted: Pikeminnow that Prey on Salmon, Steelhead by Associated Press, KTVB, 5/9/7