Northern Pikeminnow

A native fish of lakes and slow rivers, typically 21 to 30 centimetres, with a recorded maximum of 63. Adults live offshore in lakes and eat fish, insects and crustaceans; young fish live along the shore. It spawns in late spring and summer over gravel. On Kootenay Lake the province has said it is not a significant cause of kokanee losses. There is no removal program for it in British Columbia.

The Conservation Data Centre lists the Pacific drainages from the Nass south to the Columbia, and the Peace system on the Arctic side. BC Outdoors Magazine names parts of the Fraser, Columbia, Okanagan, Kootenay, Skeena and Nass drainages.

The records come from big lakes and the creeks that feed them. The provincial dataset of historical fish records for Kootenay Lake includes northern pikeminnow, and the ministry’s 2015 answers to Kootenay Lake anglers discussed it by name. In local beat records, pikeminnow turn up on North Creek, where ten were among 80 fish observations led by redside shiner; on Howser Creek, a Duncan Lake tributary; on Salter Creek; and on Holland Creek, the Windermere Lake tributary with a warmwater mix of bass, pumpkinseed and suckers. These are records of the fish being found. They are not pikeminnow fisheries.

The Conservation Data Centre describes small to large rivers and lakes, with a preference for still or slow water. Adults are usually offshore in lakes and juveniles inshore in summer. Young fish eat aquatic and land insects; adults eat fish, insects, larvae, crustaceans and plankton in spring and summer, and mostly fish in winter. It is long-lived, an estimated 15 to 20 years. BC Outdoors adds that adults use pools, backwaters, rocky areas and current seams as well as deep water, which is why they turn up wherever redside shiner and other baitfish and fry gather.

Some. BC Outdoors summarizes the evidence: large adults eat sculpins, shiners, suckers and young salmonids, but diet follows what is available, and having pikeminnow and salmon in the same water does not mean the pikeminnow are holding the salmon down.

Kootenay Lake is the local test. When anglers asked in 2015 whether the coarse fish they were catching more often were behind the kokanee decline, the ministry answered that studies from other lakes show large pikeminnow do eat some kokanee, up to half the diet of the biggest fish, but that pikeminnow are not as effective predators as bull trout and Gerrard rainbow trout, which rely more heavily on kokanee. It called a significant pikeminnow role in the recent kokanee losses unlikely, and said it had no survey data on the lake’s coarse fish.

The removal programs anglers hear about are American. The Northern Pikeminnow Sport Reward Program pays registered anglers for pikeminnow nine inches or longer from the Columbia below Priest Rapids Dam and the lower Snake River, where dams concentrate juvenile salmon. It is run by the Pacific States Marine Fisheries Commission and funded by the Bonneville Power Administration. It does not apply in British Columbia.

The fish it is most often mistaken for is the northern pike, which is unrelated. BC Outdoors gives the differences: a pike has a flat, duckbill snout, many visible teeth, a single dorsal fin set far back, and pale spots on green sides. A pikeminnow has an ordinary fish shape, clear or lightly coloured fins and no visible jaw teeth. The difference matters in the southern Kootenays, where pike are an introduced fish with their own rules and pikeminnow are native.

A peamouth chub is the other look-alike; it has a smaller mouth, a rounder head, small barbels at the corners of the mouth and dark horizontal bands on its sides. The pikeminnow’s mouth reaches back to about the front of the eye.

This is angler advice, from BC Outdoors rather than an agency. Look for pikeminnow around rocky points, creek mouths, current breaks, bridge pilings and deep pools. Minnow-pattern flies take them, so a Muddler Minnow, a Woolly Bugger or any baitfish streamer fished on the methods in streamer fishing will do, and so will the trout streamer already on your line. They are edible, with mild flesh full of fine bones.

The Conservation Data Centre gives May to July. Pikeminnow gather in large groups over gravelly shallows and lake shores and broadcast their eggs over rocks; each female carries 6,700 to 83,000 eggs, and the eggs hatch in about a week. Males mature at three and females at four. A shoal of large fish over gravel in early summer is spawning.

The 2025–2027 Region 4 Kootenay regulations do not name a daily quota for northern pikeminnow, and the regional closure on bass, perch, pike and walleye does not include it. It is not on the synopsis’s list of freshwater game fish, and neither the synopsis nor the federal BC Sport Fishing Regulations set a quota for it. A 2015 ministry note to Kootenay Lake anglers described an unlimited daily quota for non-game fish, but no current regulation repeats that wording. The general regulations prohibit spear fishing of any kind in Region 4, prohibit moving live fish or using live fish as bait, and prohibit keeping angled fish alive in a livewell or on a stringer. Check the current regulations for the water you are on.

Look in its mouth. A northern pike has rows of obvious teeth and a long, flat snout. A pikeminnow has none you can see, and its head is shaped like any other fish’s.

There is no British Columbia program asking you to, and on Kootenay Lake the province has said pikeminnow are unlikely to be a significant cause of kokanee losses. It is a native fish. Keep one to eat if the rules allow; release it otherwise.

BC Outdoors notes that the species once carried a common name containing a slur, and that the American Fisheries Society adopted “northern pikeminnow” in the late 1990s.