—posted April 21—
By biologist Heath Headley
The weather has taken a turn for the worse in the Big Dry Arm of Fort Peck Reservoir this past week. The winds have picked up and temperatures have dropped. Wind gusts were reported to be around 50 mph on Wednesday in the Big Dry Arm area. Because of these conditions, we pulled our trap nets Tuesday morning and hunkered down for a few days.
Thankfully, we were able to collect a few more walleye eggs on Monday and Tuesday before the cold front moved in. On Monday (4/15) we collected approximately 8 million walleye eggs and Tuesday (4/16) we collected 6.3 million more eggs. These two egg-takes brought our total to roughly 38.7 million eggs so far.
The winds finally subsided and we were able to reset all our trap nets today (4/19), so we’re back at it. However, the high winds and below normal temperatures have really mixed the water. Water temperatures were 41-42F degrees while setting our trap nets today which is roughly 10 degrees cooler than at the start of the week.
Photo: Zac Kremer with a big female walleye from the trap nets
