Wabamun Lake Fishery Update

[Big Grey Wolf]

Got my 2 walleye tags for Wabamun. I have another lake near my cabin with a limit of One walleye( No tags). Does that mean Any size as a keeper?
Don excellent technical paper! Just laymans thought, most good walleye lakes in Alberta seem to have a large spawning stream like Owl river in Lac la Biche. Wabamun only has small creek with the weir. May not allow a good spawn rate.
Also pike seemed to not be in large stream during walleye spawn and perhaps not eating young walleye for lunch.

[cube]

Originally Posted by Poppa

I used to think Pickerel was a Manitoba thing, but I've come to realize it's a dumb people thing. It's Walleye, period.

Given department of fisheries and Oceans calls walleye yellow pickerel, and Sask and Manitoba fishing regs also has pickerel in them (at least the last ones I got a couple of years ago) I guess not everyone has gotten on the USA band wagon to change the Canadian Common name to a USA common name yet.
Perhaps your correct and Canadians are just dummier than our American neighbors to the south .

Please note on the DFO link below you do not see walleye referred to just pickerel,
https://www.dfo-mpo.gc.ca/stats/comm...e/2018-eng.htm

[Big Grey Wolf]

Very interesting 20,000+ tons off Yellow Pickerel taken in Ontario and 15,000 + tons taken in Manitoba. As mentioned no walleye fishery. A lot of fish catch, much more than us guys with a pole and string.

[jimmyt]

It's probably bad etiquette to reply to such an old post but I cannot start new one yet so apologies in advance.

This is just my own personal, very unscientific experience, but I thought I would share. In general, like others, I would fish Wabamun for Pike because the action was plentiful and caught some decent fish. Truthfully I would only go out a couple times a year, and usually once in the fall. Most of the time I am just fishing a spoon or a storm swim bait.

I don't have an exact date, but maybe 5 years ago, the Pike fishing died off as described by others. I would catch maybe no fish or very very skinny Pike. Then, maybe 2 years ago I would just catch just 17" ish Walleye on those same spoons and swim baits.

This year I went out on Sept 16th, 2023. It felt slightly better. I caught a mixture of small walleye and small Pike. The Pike were not hammer handles, maybe a couple pounds max. Happily, those Pike did not seem skinny or sickly to me.

Most surprisingly I caught one amazing fish (I will try to upload picture in separate post) that I did not expect to find. It might have been close for 40" (sorry did not measure). I am sure it proves nothing about the fishery, but its nice to see some of these fish still exist.

[jimmyt]

Hopefully this works...

https://photos.app.goo.gl/gUfDB3Sb35DbH8hRA

[dodgeboy1979]

Originally Posted by mlee

La Plonge in sask has no walleye....which I always found strange.

it used to have them, years back they installed a weir on the lake to control flooding, this cut off the walleye from spawning.

[barbless]

Originally Posted by mapleleafman3

Calling walleye pickerel seems to be a Canadian thing.
Drives me nuts. haha

Thank you so much for posting the pic of what the fish are. Drives me nuts when people call a Walleye a Pickerel . Have shown them the difference and they still insist a Walleye is a Pickerel. They are set in their ways