Wabamun Lake, a Fishery in Crisis
 

I've posted my 2024 update about the Wabamun Lake fishery to my Substack: DonOutdoors

"A healthy population would have more fish in the lower age classes than in the mature ones, and that is not happening here. As in 2020, it appears that few new walleye are being recruited to the mature population that has one dominant age class."

Good stuff. I agree with your idea of a 2 week window to allow some walleye for the table. This will give a good idea on how this affects the overall health of the rest of the fishery

Great write up Don! It was so clear cut and unarguable that I doubt the government could understand it, yet alone pay attention to someone of your position and credibility. Would love to sit in a room with about 20 or people like you and me whom have fished and enjoyed Wab for the past 30+ years and tell a Government official what we have all seen over the years, show the albums of pictures and share the stories over the years that would provide all the "Scientific" evidence they could ever need. Your suggestions are also probably to straight forward, simplistic and evident for them to be able to implement. Just open the darn lake for retention on a general licence, thin out a few hundred thousand walleye in that over populated size bracket, check it next year and adjust for affect. Lol..my wife has named that specific sized walleye..."Kevin"...not sure where she came up with that one...but for the past few years when we head there that's all I hear.."Yep Kevin's Back!" Because that's all we catch and it just that same fish over and over. She doest wat to even hit Wab anymore "Why?" She says..."So I can catch Kevin 20 times??" I surely intend to spend many more days out there enjoying my retirement during the week this year and do a bunch of fishing in areas that maybe are not usually on my list, just to see what is going on all over the lake. Hopefully will see you out there! Keep up the great work Don, it's appriciated!

Yeah Wab needs some balance

I spent a fair bit of time out at Wab this winter trying to fill my tags which wasn't much of an issue however out of all of the fish we caught and measured there was only one that was over 43cm and it was a 52cm fish. It feels like if you were to catch any other size it was a big shock to the whole group of us.

It has really changed compared to even 10-15 years ago. I know I am probably beating a dead horse but I don't really think stocking endless walleye into a lake that was pretty fun to fish before does anything really positive for the fishery.

Sounds like the reason I sold my place on Lesser Slave a few years back. I tried to tell the biologists that there were too many walleye and they were starved and stunted. I hear LSL is marginally better today than it was seven years ago when I sold. I hope Wabamun can also improve. I have great memories fishing that lake in the winter...hardwater and open water in the discharge when it was allowed.

Don, great article, thanks for sharing!

My experience too, over the past couple years has been an abundance of 43cm-ish walleye, with the odd one a bit bigger, and some a bit smaller...but most around that 38-43cm size. Based on your table, are you saying that these are the fry released in 2012 and are over 10 years old?

I agree that this fishery would benefit from some thinning out of the walleye population.

Indications are that Walleye start spawning at age 6 - 7 yrs or about 30 Cm.

There should be recruitment but the problem for the early stocking in Pigeon was that the fish were from Brett Creek at Primrose Lake and were river spawn fish, not shoal spawn fish.

The Wabamun adult fish were taken by volunteers at Lac St. Anne and Isle. St. Anne has an area of flow at the narrows and alot of spawning happens on this channel where there is current.

Wabamun needs fish that SHOAL SPAWN. Calling Lake has both, and in front of the town site there is alot of spawning walleye. That East shore has alot of wind and alot of big gravel to protect the fertilized eggs.

Perhaps the problem is not so much no spawning activity but rather successful spawning activity.

Pigeon now has a population of SHOAL SPAWN fish, as tide creek is a pretty intermittent flow and not too successful year to year for successful river spawning.

I'm just a simple country boy, but perhaps F & W could offer bonus tags to fishermen who participate in a catch derby at Pigeon, where the catch is kept in a rough tote full of water in the boat, and the electro shock boat comes around every 20 minutes to collect the adult walleye into their holding tank, which then would be transferred to Wabamun for stocking.

Fishermen would be happy to help as they get bonus tags. F & W would be happy as the Fishermen do the heavy lifting.

In short order, you would get the necessary population of shoal spawn walleye to increase spawning success.

Drewski

Wab needs more forage not more walleye

Drewski, again that is to simple an idea...heck I wouldn't even care about the tags. I've got lots of boat, and lots of time. Would gladly volunteer to help out! Any excuse to hit the water is all I need. Besides the Province generously opted to give Veterans a free licence last year, so it's just giving back! If only Common Sense and Government were allowed in the same hemisphere....

We each bought the 10 tags each last summer, and easily filled them, and only two fish that we landed were over the 43cm, and had to be thrown back.

thanks for posting , great article , sounds like it was is experiencing the same declines that pigeon did after all the walleye stocking. the good thing it is reversible if the walleye population is lowered . pigeon seams to be on its way to recovery and a more balanced fishery. it just takes a long time when mistakes happen .

I can already imagine the gong show.

It’s a common tactic used outside of Alberta

For example one lake my brother fishes for lakers in B.C. has a combination of an over/under limit and 2 one month openings. One month for open water retention and another for ice fishing. This lake was collapsed in the past and has recovered vary well with a good mix of age classes of fish

The fact is management like this is used effectively across the world

Thanks everyone for your responses. They've backed up what the retired biologists and the Wabamun Watershed Management Council has been hearing for many years.

Drewski Canuck: I shared your comment about river vs. shoal spawning walleye with the retired fisheries biologists, and they said they had heard of this before, but don't believe it's a genetic thing (passed down the generations) but a learned thing (not confirmed by any research). In other words, that might be affecting mature fish transferred from one lake to another, but it shouldn't affect the millions of 1 cm, hatchery-raised fry that were stocked in Wabamun from 2010 to 2014. They do believe that Wabamun has very few spawning areas for walleye available. Lots of unknowns.