Catch an invasive fish in Northern California this summer and you might get paid for it.
The 2026 Eel River Pikeminnow Fishing Derby is open from 1 July to 31 August, with $5,000 in cash and prizes and no entry fee. A California licence is required for anyone 16 and over. The largest single payout, $800, goes to whoever lands the most Sacramento pikeminnow over 12 inches; other categories reward the most fish over six inches and the longest fish, and six under-18 entrants win $50 each in a draw.
Rules are tight. Barbless artificial lures only, no bait, geotagged photo evidence for every entry - and no releasing. There is no bag limit on pikeminnow in the Eel, and putting one back disqualifies it.
The event is growing. TRIB Research and California Trout, who run it, recorded over 500 fish in 2024. The 2025 derby drew 31 entrants who landed 1,118 pikeminnow, 260 of them longer than 12 inches, topping out at 21.75 inches.
"On top of longstanding stressors such as historic overfishing, damaging logging practices, habitat loss, and the accelerating impacts of climate change, pikeminnow present an additional challenge to the recovery of native fish populations through both predation and competition," California Trout says.
Scientists working the river are careful not to overstate the case. Dr Gabe Rossi, a coastal rivers ecologist with CalTrout and UC Berkeley, has set out where the fish fits in the Eel's problems.
"Pikeminnow aren't the cause of salmon decline in the Eel River, but they are an impediment to salmon recovery, and recovery of other native fish," Rossi told California Fly Fisher.
He is also candid that a derby will not clear them out. "Complete removal is near impossible, and the methods we would need to take to do so would cause ecological risk," Rossi said. Poisons such as rotenone have been used on other rivers; the trade-off is everything else that dies with the target.
Behind the contest sits a long research programme. The Wiyot Tribe and Stillwater Sciences started monitoring the South Fork Eel in 2018 under a Tribal Wildlife Grant focused on Pacific lamprey, a fish of deep cultural significance to the Wiyot. Diet work turned up pikeminnow feeding on ammocoetes, the lamprey's larval stage. CalTrout, UC Berkeley, the Bureau of Land Management, California Department of Fish and Wildlife and TRIB Research have since joined in. A channel-spanning weir, funded by CalTrout in 2023, now traps pikeminnow on the South Fork while native fish pass through, and succeeded in its first year of operation.
Marisa McGrew, fisheries and natural resources specialist for the Wiyot Tribe, frames the species precisely.
"They've coexisted in many places, but in the Eel they have made it harder for native fish to rebound from historic impacts," McGrew said.
That view carries through to what becomes of the dead fish. Wiyot crews have passed culled pikeminnow to crab fishers as bait and to Clear Lake tribes, for whom the species is native and traditional food - and where introduced bass have pushed it close to disappearing.
Derby rules follow the same logic. Permitted uses are consumption, garden fertiliser, crab bait or research; abandoning fish on the bank breaches California's waste-of-fish statute. Organisers run the line "If you can't beat 'em, eat 'em", publish a fish-cake recipe and argue the fish is good eating once the y-bones are dealt with. State health guidance is less enthusiastic: one serving a week for men over 18 and women over 50, none for anyone else, because of mercury.
A few anglers rate them as sport. Zac Reinstein, a fly angler and fisheries biologist, told California Fly Fisher they are no pushover.
"Can hit hard or subtle, on top or bottom. They're very strong and make long runs. They use their weight and current to their advantage," Reinstein said. "Big ones are not easy to catch even though you can often sight fish for them. Fish don't get to be that big without being smart."
Trevor Evans, raised on the Russian River, started chasing them by accident. "I would catch 12- to 16-inch pikeminnow frequently while fishing for bass, but once I realized how big they get, I started really targeting them," he said.
Expectations are measured. "Though the number of pikeminnow in the Eel is staggering, we are hopeful the derby combined with ongoing suppression efforts will positively affect native fishes," TRIB Research wrote after the 2025 event, flagging plans to expand the range and the prizes.
