Walleye movement and spawning areas revealed by acoustic telemetry

Cameron Davis, Zoe Almeida, Christopher Sullivan, Rudstam, Brooking, Tony VanDeValk, Olaf Jensen.

A 3-year acoustic telemetry study of adult walleye was initiated in 2023 using internal acoustic tags and a comprehensive gridded array of receivers moored on the bottom of Oneida lake and major tributaries. An additional 4 receivers were added to the array in 2025, bringing the total number of receivers actively deployed to 68. To date we have tagged 239 adult walleyes, and we have had 100% recovery of receivers in both 2024 and 2025, resulting in over 12 million valid fish detections. Preliminary analyses indicate a mix of lake and tributary use for spawning activity, with Scriba Creek being the most utilized tributary. As of February 2026, we have had 49 tags returned by anglers and 1 tagged walleye captured in a Cornell-deployed gillnet. Of those 49 angler-harvested fish, 25 were captured during daylight hours, all from a boat, while fall nighttime inshore angling has accounted for 10 of the tag returns. We will continue to collect data through summer 2026, and we will continue to monitor spawning habitat usage. Future analyses will aim to describe seasonal movement patterns and better understand presumed mortality rates of tagged walleye. Cameron Davis, a technician at CBFS and master’s student at Cornell, is analyzing this data together with Chris Sullivan and Zoe Almeida.