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Home > Fish and Wildlife Service News >
Iowa Department of Natural Resources
Fish Hatcheries Gear Up for Busy SeasonIowa Department of Natural Resources — 3/28/2006The Iowa Department of Natural Resources' fisheries staff collects northern pike from the Mississippi River shortly after ice out. As inland lake water temperature approaches 45 degrees, staff will turn their focus to collecting walleyes. "We just started setting nets on Monday, and will increase the number as the week goes on," said Scott Gritters, fisheries biologist with the DNR's Guttenberg hatchery, who leads the annual pike collection from the near freezing backwaters of the Mississippi River. The DNR will collect about 60 female and 180 male northern pike to hatch out about 700,000 fish, called fry. Most of the fry hatched from the northern pike collected at Guttenberg will either be returned to the backwaters of the Mississippi River or sent to the National Fish Hatchery at Genoa, Wis., and grown to fingerling size before being released. Of the remaining fry, an estimated 50,000 will be released in Saylorville Lake and another 10,000 will go to the Cedar River. Other lakes and rivers will receive 140,000, 3-inch northern pike fingerlings, but those fish will come from pike collected from the lakes in Dickinson County, which is also a focal point of the walleye collection. The DNR collects walleye from East and West Okoboji and Sprit lakes, as well as from Lake Rathbun, Storm and Clear lakes. The goal is to collect enough walleyes to hatch out about 106 million walleye. "Clear Lake is about 70 to 80 percent ice free and based on the seven to 10 day forecast, I would guess that we would start in the first or second week in April," said Jim Wahl, fisheries biologist with the DNR's Clear Lake station. A crew from the Spirit Lake hatchery will install a water line Friday, which is part of the temporary hatchery constructed in the basement of the Clear Lake station each year. Walleye collection happens at night, where entanglement nets are placed in traditional walleye spawning areas. Walleye collecting lasts from seven to 10 days, depending of nightly catches. The Dickinson County lakes also supply eggs for the muskie program. Only about 500,000 eggs will be needed to fill the stocking requests for muskies.
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