A $1.2 million federal grant announced this week will be used to design a new fish exclusion feature to keep invasive and predatory northern pike from escaping the 110-foot-wide spillway at Lake Catamount south of Steamboat Springs.

Joel Anderson, Catamount Metropolitan District manager for 30 years, said partnering agencies have been discussing the installation of fish netting or an escapement prevention feature since 2016. The current funding will facilitate a design by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation at the 530-acre private lake.

The funding was awarded to the Upper Colorado River Endangered Fish Recovery Program that is a partnership of local, state and federal agencies; water and power interests; and environmental groups working to recover endangered fish in the Upper Colorado River Basin.

“That’s great news, making some headway,” Anderson said of the grant. “Hopefully, the next step we will see a design that is going to work for everybody. We are hoping they come up with a design that is pretty easy to maintain.”

Colorado Parks & Wildlife staff have worked since 2007 to net and manage northern pike at Lake Catamount. CPW Aquatic Biologist Bill Atkinson said northern pike in Catamount has been a problem for years because the fish can escape across and down the 35-foot-tall spillway.

“We spill pretty regularly throughout the summer,” Anderson said of water that flows over the spillway at the pass-through reservoir in the Yampa River watershed.

Anderson said the project design could be a netting system similar to that at Elkhead Reservoir or could be a mechanical structure such as screening on top of the spillway that could be removed or retracted for cleaning.

At Elkhead Reservoir, a nearly 600-foot-long net to keep gamefish inside the reservoir when the spillway operates was installed in September 2016, according to reservoir management agency Colorado River District. That project cost was approximately $1.2 million, per the river district website. If allowed to escape at Elkhead, invasive and nonnative northern pike compete with native and endangered fish in the Yampa and Green rivers.

The funding for Lake Catamount is part of a Bureau of Reclamation announcement of an overall $21 million from Bipartisan Infrastructure Law funding for endangered species recovery and conservation throughout the Colorado River Basin. The funding will support multiple projects, including efforts to recover four threatened and endangered fish species native to the Upper Colorado River and San Juan River basins. Other funded projects range from $2.6 million for repairs needed at a fish hatchery in Ouray to $5.2 million to design and construct a fish passage structure on the San Juan River west of Farmington, New Mexico.

Anderson said the first officially reported capture of a northern pike at Lake Catamount was in 1996.

Biologist Atkinson educates that nonnative northern pike are now problematic throughout the Yampa River watershed. The sport fish were intentionally introduced in the late 1970s into Elkhead Reservoir.

Northern pike were illegally introduced into Stagecoach Reservoir in the early 1990s by individuals employing “bucket biology,” Atkinson said.

CPW has no size or possession limits on the invasive pike, and fishermen are advised to keep or donate the fish.

“Harvest is encouraged to benefit native species as well as the popular trout resources of the Yampa Basin,” Atkinson said. Metro district manager Anderson noted that northern pike “taste just fine, if you prepare it right.”