The Boat California Facebook page on Saturday, July 1, featured an uplighting message to promote the California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW) Free Fishing Day:
“It’s time to get your fish on! It’s #CAFreeFishingDay today. Find a hot spot and bring home a winner? www.wildlife.ca.gov/… n
The only problem is that photo displayed on the Facebook post is of a woman happily holding a fish that appears to be a northern pike, a species native to the Midwest, Canada and Great Lakes region that is not found in California!
Go here to the Boat California Facebook page: m.facebook.com/…
Ironically, the CDFW staff spent ten years of efforts from 1997 to 2007 to eradicate the northern pike from Lake Davis near Portola by use of rotenone, electroshocking, netting and other methods.
California first chemically treated Lake Davis in 1997, but pike reappeared 18 months later. CDFW officials believed the pike was either reintroduced illegally by a rogue “bucket biologist” or somehow survived the first poisoning attempt.
After the population of toothy predators was finally eliminated in 2007 in Lake Davis and its tributaries, the Department restocked Davis in the spring of 2008. I was there for the reopening of the lake after it was stocked with trout — and had a blast catching trophy rainbows. The pike have never been seen in Davis or California since then.
The Department also eradicated the pike in Frenchman Lake in 1989. Unlike like the pike in Davis, the predatory fish never reappeared in Frenchman.
The state of California spent many millions of dollars in these three eradication programs to rid the pike from California. State and federal biologists and the American Fisheries Society feared that if the pike had made it downriver into the Feather River and then into the Sacramento River and the Delta, it could have devastated native salmon, steelhead and other imperiled fish populations.
If anybody does catch a pike in California ever, they shouldn't be smiling about their catch. They should get word to the CDFW immediately about the catch and where they caught it so the Department can make sure this species never gains a foothold in the state.
Many folks commented on the photo used to advertise free fishing day on Boat California’s Facebook page.
Phil Hunkins commented: “Irony? Advertising a free fishing day in CA while using a picture of a fish that the last time it was found in California they poisoned the entire lake to get rid of it.”
So go “find a hot spot and bring home a winner” — but let’s sure hope that fish isn’t a northern pike if you’re fishing in California waters!