Now here’s something you’ll never see in Minnesota or North Dakota.

I came across a story from the Idaho Statesman newspaper the other day about a walleye “invasion” in Lake Lowell, a southwestern Idaho lake known for its largemouth bass fishing.

As a result of the unwanted influx, Idaho’s Fish and Game department is asking anglers to have at it with the walleyes, the Idaho Statesman reported. No limits; instead, anglers should “catch, kill and keep” every walleye they catch.

The fish apparently were illegally introduced by a fisherman in 2022, the Statesman reported, and may “be competing and taking food from largemouth bass.” The population has “advanced quickly” since 2022, fisheries biologist Art Butts told the newspaper.

“Idaho and walleye just aren’t a good match in most places,” the newspaper said, citing a news release from Idaho Fish and Game.

“Just because there’s places in the Midwest that do really good with walleye, and they haven’t impacted largemouth bass … that doesn’t mean that they’re not going to have an impact here,” Butts told the Statesman.

Given the mindset of many anglers in Minnesota and North Dakota, where “if it’s not a walleye, it’s not a fish” is a common perception, it might be hard to grasp the concept of walleyes being an undesirable species.

But just like any invasive species, walleyes can have a big-time impact on the ecology of lakes and rivers where they don’t belong. And once the genie’s out of the bottle, so to speak, reversing the impact is difficult, if not impossible.

That’s no different than any other invasive species, whether it’s zebra mussels or jumping carp.

As the Statesman reported, Idaho’s Fish and Game is encouraging anglers to target walleyes, even though it probably won’t fix the problem.

As the old saying goes: When life gives you lemons, make lemonade.

“We know that angling by itself is probably not going to do much for the population,” Butts says in the article. “Walleye are considered one of the best-eating fish in freshwater, and so while we’ve got this problem, let’s get the word out to folks that might be interested in fishing for them.

“Here’s a place where you … have a good opportunity to do that.”

This isn’t the first time fisheries managers have raised the alarm about walleyes, of course. The Columbia River has long had a population of unwanted walleyes, to the detriment of native salmon species, and now has a reputation as a trophy walleye fishery. As with Lake Lowell in Idaho, there’s no size or bag limit on walleyes in the Columbia River.

There have been other instances of unwanted game fish species, as well, and not just walleyes. According to the National Park Service, non-native lake trout were discovered in Wyoming’s Yellowstone Lake in 1994. Since then, millions of lake trout have been removed from Yellowstone Lake through gillnetting, in an effort to lower the population and lessen the negative impact on native cutthroat trout. Other techniques, such as spreading plant-based pellets over lake trout spawning sites to suffocate the eggs,

also are being explored, the NPS said.

Lake trout are probably my favorite fish to catch, and walleyes are right up there. Just goes to show, I guess – one angler’s prize is another angler’s problem.

I’ve said it before, and I’ll probably say it again:

There’s something about watching a bobber that just never gets old.

I thought about that again last weekend, when I got the chance to spend a few hours walleye fishing on Devils Lake.

My fishing partners had been over there a few days already and had done well dunking leeches below slip bobbers in about 15 feet of water, give or take, the previous two mornings. Eater-size fish, mostly, with their biggest stretching the tape at 19½ inches.

That fish went back in the lake to hopefully make more anglers’ bobbers sink sometime down the road.

Expecting a spot to produce walleyes three days in a row might be a stretch, especially in a location as small as this particular area, but we decided to give it a few hours anyway.

Boat traffic certainly wouldn’t be a problem. Even though it was a holiday weekend, I was struck by how quiet the lake was – at least in the area where we were fishing. We didn’t see more than a handful of boats the whole time.

Not that I’m complaining, mind you.

The action was considerably slower than what my fishing partners had experienced the previous two days – just my luck – but we still managed to put three eaters in the box during our short time on the water.

I had the pleasure of watching my bobber sink to a 17-inch walleye.

I’ll take fish like that any day of the week. And if getting to watch a bobber sink is part of the deal, all the better.

By Kanishka Singh

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The U.S. government on Thursday announced probes into hiring practices and diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives by the state of Minnesota and Virginia’s George Mason University.

It was the latest crackdown on such programs by President Donald Trump’s administration.

The U.S. Education Department said it opened an investigation into George Mason University over its DEI practices. The department alleges that they violated Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which bars racial discrimination in U.S. education programs that receive federal funding.

The U.S. Justice Department said its civil rights division opened an investigation into Minnesota, including the Minnesota Department of Human Services, to determine whether it has engaged in race- and sex-based discrimination in its state employment hiring practices.

George Mason University said it received a department letter on Thursday morning and would “work in good faith to give a full and prompt response,” adding it did not discriminate on the basis of race or ethnicity.

The Education Department statement cited a complaint from some professors at the university.

“According to the complaint, GMU leadership have promoted and adopted unlawful DEI policies from 2020 through the present, which give preferential treatment to prospective and current faculty from ‘underrepresented groups’ to advance ‘anti-racism,’” the department said in its statement.

The Minnesota Department of Human Services said it followed all state and federal hiring laws. “Justification of non-affirmative action hires for some vacancies has been required by state law since 1987,” it said in a statement.

The Trump administration has threatened educational institutions and some U.S. states with federal funding cuts over DEI practices, climate initiatives, transgender policies and pro-Palestinian protests against U.S. ally Israel’s military assault on Gaza.

Trump has signed multiple executive orders aimed at dismantling diversity initiatives, and has cast DEI as anti-merit and discriminatory against white people and men.

Civil rights advocates say DEI practices help address historic inequities for marginalized groups like women, the LGBT community and ethnic minorities.

Separately, the U.S. Department of Agriculture said on Thursday it would no longer consider a farmer’s race or sex in many of its farm loan, commodity and conservation programs, ending a longstanding effort to address the agency’s history of discrimination.

(Reporting by Kanishka Singh in Washington; Editing by David Gregorio)