CODY, Wyo. (AP) - Wildlife officials have been catching and killing as many walleye as they can for the past three weeks at a Wyoming reservoir.
Wyoming Game and Fish Department officials are killing off the invasive fish at Buffalo Bill Reservoir to keep the species from overwhelming and killing the smaller cutthroat trout, the Cody Enterprise reported .
The process will go on indefinitely because the walleye cannot be eradicated, Game and Fish officials said.
Walleye were illegally introduced to the reservoir by an unknown party in 2002. As a policy, the agency has stated that it has the responsibility to protect and restore the native cutthroat in the region.
The department wants to maximize its removal of walleye at a key spawning time and capture others. One key factor in determining the perfect spawning time is water temperature, officials said. The water should be about 43 degrees.
The main target for Game and Fish personnel is female walleye. An impregnated fish can hold 50,000 eggs.
The agency and volunteers use seven gillnets of football field-sized length in addition to electroshocking to capture and kill the fish.
Last year, 32 females were electroshocked and 241 were caught in nets, fisheries biologist Jason Burkhardt said. There were 517 males electroshocked of at least 12.7 inches (32.26 centimeters). Males in nets had to be at least 18 inches (45.72 centimeters) long and eight of those were caught.
Game and Fish began setting gillnets April 16 and will complete this spring’s kill by next week.
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Information from: The Cody Enterprise, http://www.codyenterprise.com
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