They're in!
Great news... we have 250 new residents in Finger Lake!
On Friday October 23, Silver Moon Springs Fish Hatchery delivered 250 extra large walleye fingerlings to Finger Lake. The fish appeared very healthy and once planted in the lake all immediately swam away, there were no lost fish. The lake temperature was 45 degrees which matched the truck tank water temperature exactly which was perfect for stocking.
The fish ranged in length from 8 inches to as long as 12 inches. The driver said he measured one fish at 13 inches. The smaller fish are likely the males and the larger females. These fish are 3 year olds so seeing the males and females starting to separate by size is expected as the females grow and mature somewhat faster than the males. The fish hatchery driver thought the females should start spawning in the spring of 2022, the males may take an additional year.
The cost for the fish was $950 which was completely covered by donations so thanks to all who helped make this possible. Also, thanks to Sue and Deb Sazama for helping plant the fish. We did take fish in pails to six locations on the lake and planted the rest off of Sue's property. Sue and Deb planted a pail at each of the following properties - Hatchers, Skotzkes, Angonnes, the access lot, Behms and Bowen-Howes. We did not count the number of fish in each pail because our goal was to get them in the lake as quickly as possible but I would guess there was 12 -15 fish per pail. Planting the fish around the lake should help improve survival.
While there are never any guarantees when planting fish, I would expect we should see a 50% survival rate on these fish and possibly better than that. These fish were not fin clipped because we were trying to keep survival as high as possible and fin clipping can put additional stress on the fish and increase mortality.
In recent years since the bad drought a decade ago, we have planted 750 large walleyes in Finger Lake to reestablish the walleye population, During the drought all of the lake's walleye spawning beds were dry so spawning was very poor for a number of years. The walleye population declined dramatically leading to our efforts to rebuild the population. Stocking is one step in doing so. The DNR wants us to hold on further future stocking to allow time to see how the past three have impacted the population on the lake. We need to stay focused now on habitat improvement to improve fingerling survival to adulthood.
Check out the pictures of the stocking!
Bill
