Idaho Department of Fish and Game gives fish mortality update

TWIN FALLS, Idaho (KMVT/KSVT) —The Idaho Department of Fish and Game continues to monitor the Snake River near Centennial Park as the treatment plan for the Quagga mussel continues.

The department started tagging fish earlier this week before the treatment began. That way they could keep track of fish mortality when it did occur.

Since then, they’ve been out on the river from Pillar Falls to Centennial Park monitoring the area.

As of now they’ve found few fish, but caution that it’s still early in the treatment process and they will continue to keep tabs on conditions. Fish mortality may still occur into the middle and even closer to the end of the month, according to officials.

Fish and Game notes that what they are seeing is pooling of fish in certain areas.

Regional fisheries manager Mike Peterson says, “Any place that there are spring inflows were seeing fish pool up around those inflows for that fresh water. So that is something that we weren’t sure would occur and this point we’re learning new things each day. "

The fish mortality they can account for doesn’t include a lot of sport fish species, so far.

Officials says that this is a fluid situation and still early into the first quagga treatment, and there could be changes over the coming days and weeks.

“At this point in terms of species composition we’ve seen that majority of fish have been large scale suckers, common carp, a few yellow perch but very few game fish species at this time,” says Peterson.

While the initial numbers may seem low, they could change.