Apr 22, 2026
Fort Peck Walleye Spawn Update
2026 Fort Peck Walleye Spawn Update IV, April 21
By biologist Heath Headley
It's been an interesting past several days at the walleye spawning operation on Fort Peck Reservoir. Windy and cold one day, calm and sunny the next. Thankfully, we’ve been on the warmer side of things recently and walleye are back cruising the shallows as water temperatures increased to 50-52 degrees as of Tuesday.
Numbers of walleye captured in trap nets have been gradually increasing since the last update. A large portion of the female walleye have been ripe and ready to release their eggs. Because of this, we’ve managed to hold three more egg-takes since the last update. We managed to collect 4 million eggs on Sunday (4/19), 6.2 million on Monday (4/20), and 9.8 million Tuesday (4/21).
These three egg collection efforts pushed the egg total to almost 44 million walleye eggs for the season. It looks like we have one more day of warm and favorable weather before another cold front moves into the area towards the end of the week. Hopefully, we can hold one last egg-take and near our goal of 50 million eggs.
