Minnow Fund/Fingerling Update

[Red Childress]

A secondhand email from the PFBC. To those who were involved in raising those monies, give yourself a pat on the back!
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Three River’s Musky Club members, 8/6/2012


Per Jim Burr’s request, I would like to update you onthe minnow project here at the Linesville SFH. To date, we have purchased $3,996.24 dollars worth of fathead minnows. The minnows were purchase by the gracious donation that your club made to our hatchery for the purpose of feeding our 2012 production Musky. In addition to your donation the Linesville Hatchery has purchased another $2,500.00 worth on minnows in place of dry feed. Together these purchases equal a total of 978 lbs of minnows delivered to Linesville.

Currently we have 36,233 musky on station. Of the 36,233 fishon site 15,320 have been on minnows since June 29th. To achieve feeding the musky one minnow every other day, we have fed a total of 640lbs to date.

We have also stocked a total of 452 lbs of minnows into our production ponds for production. So as you can see we have already “used” 1,092 lbs of minnows. This is the point in the year that we will see the investment of our minnow production ponds. We estimate that we will need an additional 1,000lbs of minnows to finish the 15,000 musky until late September. We feel that our production ponds should be able to supply us with this amount of minnows. In addition to supplying us enough for this year we plan to have enough to start our ponds for next season.

As far as the Musky as a whole…both the minnow fed fish and the feed fed musky are longer and heavier that any year in the past. To give you a comparison, last year overall our musky averaged 321 fish/lb. and measured 4.7” the end of July. This year the musky averaged 37.1 fish/lb. and measured 6.1” long the end of July. This was accomplished by an earlier egg take in the spring and the help with these minnows. The minnows helped because it enabled us to move our minnow fed musky (15,000 plus) outdoors earlier to give additional tank space for the remainder of the feed fed fish which helped growth.

I am very pleased to see such good results so early. With out a doubt your efforts have contributed to the healthiest musky ever produced at our facility. I can’t thank you folks enough and I look forward to your comments when we stock these fish.


Thank You again



Rob



Rob Brown | Hatchery Manager
Pennsylvania Fish & Boat Commission
Linesville State Fish Hatchery
13300 Hartstown Rd. | Linesville, PA 16424
Phone: 814.683.4451 | Fax: 814.683.4215
www.fishandboat.com