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Do you want to know how the stocking went this year?
Do you want to know if any lakes were added to the stocking list?
Do you want to know if your favorite lake is being removed?
Do you want to know why you favorite lake was remoaved last year?
State of the Muskie Address
Guest Speaker:
Bill James - Chief of Indiana Fisheries
TONIGHT @ 7:30
Fishers American Legion
Simply THE BEST source for finding out any information about Indiana's Muskie program!!
Absolutely great news for the muskie fishing in Indiana. Always a great meeting with Bill James as well. 21 Indiana lakes were stocked, 19 of them at 5 per acre, Tippy got its usual 1 per acre and Brookville got about 2 per acre this year. According to Bill the egg collection that was done on site this year at Webster was a big help. They collected 1.5 million eggs and through the process raised about 28,000 8.5" Muskies. He cited several procedural changes at the hatchery that made a positive impact on this years stocking. All fish were 30 day minnow fed this year. If I understood Bill correctly, they found that less Muskies were being recovered from the hatchery pond when they were on the 90 day plan (birds being the biggest culprit of taking fish). Thank's to HMH for getting Bill to the meeting again this year.
Sorry for the delay, but here is the whole breakdown of what has transpired this year.
From 4/3 to 4/16 they were able to extract 734,000 eggs from 40 females. Their quota every year is 500,000, so this year already started off much better than last. They were able to produce 510,000 sac fry from those fertilized eggs and 342,000 survived to become “swim-up” fingerlings. Between this stage and actually putting them in the rearing ponds they offered them to other states. Fortunately the other states were on track to meet their quotas, so Indiana kept all of their muskies this year. 33,275 muskies reached the age to be put into the ponds to be forage fed. 28,415 of these fish made it through the 30 day forage feed period as well. This was an astounding 85% return rate from the ponds. This was partly to do with a new cormorant control system they put into place.
The IDNR only needed approximately 18,000 muskies to meet there quota for stocking all of the intended lakes. This number allowed 5 muskies to be stocked per acre in most of the lakes stocked in the past except Tippecanoe that as always received 1 fish per acre since it is at the bottom of the watershed.
The bad news of the year is that Palestine, Plover, and Sandpiper were removed. Palestine was removed due to the lack of results the IDNR were looking for and Plover and Sandpiper were removed because of the damage to the levee from the floods earlier in the year.
The good news is that Brookville Res. got all of the surplus muskies. Brookville has always received the surplus, but they often only get fry or non forage fed fish. This year it got 10,015 30 day forage fed fish. This is a true stocking of fish that that have a greater chance of survival. Muskies have been stocked in Brookville for years, but this is quite a boost for the lake.
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The IDNR also set a trap in Bass Lake for a survey as well. They set one trap for three days and captured 68 muskies that had a combined weight of over 1000 lbs with only one recapture and ranged from 36 to 44 inches. They also started to stock other surrounding lakes as well, creating somewhat of a flowage system. If you haven’t fished these lakes yet, you really owe yourself a visit. As far south as it is, it often has a longer season that produces some really nice early and late year fish.
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I still have to update the list for last year and this year, but here is a link to the complete stocking history through 2006.
Complete History