Doug Leier: Stocking plays a key role in North Dakota’s fishing opportunities

WEST FARGO – I’ve loosely in contrast a few of our fisheries division work to farming.

Planting, stocking and rising fish is parallel to farmers planting crops. You want the appropriate soil, proper circumstances and climate to develop the crop. Wheat or walleyes, it’s not too far off, when you consider it.

So, this spring, when farmers have been battling snow, ice and chilly, the identical circumstances giving farmers matches have been irritating for fisheries biologists and managers.

Merely having soil doesn’t equate to a bumper crop of wheat, and the appropriate water is required to develop fish to inventory. When fisheries biologists are requested to “inventory this lake,” it begins a course of.

Step one in establishing a brand new lake is to make sure that the general public has entry. Subsequent, a small water physique could help panfish and never a predator like northern pike. Or, if the water has no fish, they might inventory yellow perch, which might thrive on aquatic bugs and amphipods when there aren’t any different fish to compete with.

For many anglers, northern pike and perch take a again seat to walleye.

Due to the excessive angler need and curiosity within the fishing – this summer season and much more so sooner or later – it’s vital to have a look at how the climate this spring created a singular problem for fisheries managers and biologists.

Jerry Weigel, Sport and Fish Division manufacturing and improvement part supervisor, mentioned taking eggs and milt from Sakakawea and Devils Lake walleyes, elevating the eggs in Garrison Dam Nationwide Fish Hatchery, and later releasing tens of millions of fingerlings within the dozens of prairie walleye lakes and elsewhere is important to sustaining these fisheries to fulfill angler expectations.

The 2022 walleye egg objective was about 58 million eggs, and greater than 70 million eggs have been harvested, Weigel mentioned.

As ordinary, Lake Sakakawea walleye supplied the vast majority of the eggs this previous spring.

“For a lot of the final decade, the overwhelming majority of our walleye eggs have come from Sakakawea,” mentioned Dave Fryda, division Missouri River System supervisor. “Total, the fishery in Lake Sakakawea remains to be in good condition. We’re in a position to take ample numbers of high quality eggs to be used all through North Dakota.”

But, declining water ranges on Sakakawea might change issues down the street.

“Whereas the walleye inhabitants remains to be doing actually good in Sakakawea, we’ve got some considerations within the coming years as we’re on the lowest stage we’ve been in effectively over a decade,” Fryda mentioned. “And the place we go from right here within the subsequent yr or two might be sort of the turning level. We’re nonetheless in good condition, but when water ranges proceed to say no, we might see some compromise within the fishery.”

By way of stocking new waters, biologists will sometimes assess the dimensions of the lake and measure depth and oxygen ranges to see if it might probably help fish over winter.

In some situations, they might set nets to find out what sort of fish, if any, are already current. Then, like that farmer planning which crops to plant, they use the data gathered to pick fish finest suited to the lake. Whereas anglers might want walleyes or perch, the limiting elements on the water physique could bode effectively for another species as a substitute.

If, for instance, the water is already filled with fathead minnows, walleyes could also be the best choice for producing high quality fishing in a brief period of time as a result of they develop effectively in that kind of surroundings.

As soon as fish are chosen and stocked, the lake is left alone for a time to let the fish develop to catchable measurement. Periodic take a look at netting is finished to guage survival, development and potential copy.

When the fish grow to be ample and enormous sufficient for anglers to catch, the lake is added to the

fishing waters listing

for anglers to see.