The weather continues to keep things interesting in the Big Dry Arm of Fort Peck Reservoir. Gusty winds and cold water temperatures seem to be the norm during this walleye spawning season. It seems like the wind blows 20+ mph every day and yesterday we had gusts of 40 mph! Today we even had a little bit of ice in the Nelson Creek area. However, we have been back up and running since Monday and checking our nets on a daily basis (with the exception of few nets yesterday).
Water surface temperatures really haven’t warmed much since the last update. Today, water surface temperatures throughout our trap netting locations ranged from 36 to 40 degrees. We have noticed a few more walleye show up in our trap nets, but it hasn’t been a runaway by any means. It’s been a combination of few male walleye and green (holding eggs) walleye and an occasional ripe (releasing eggs) female walleye.
The good news is we were able to hold two egg collections today – one for northern pike and one for walleye. We were able to collect approximately 300,000 more northern pikes eggs and also a little over 3 million walleye eggs today. It isn’t a huge start to the season, but at least we’re finally on the board with some walleye eggs. We will continue to plug away in hopes of catching some more walleye, but the forecast for the upcoming weekend does not look promising with another storm system headed our way.
