The Iowa Department of Natural Resources’ spring fish spawning season is over and Iowa’s two walleye hatcheries are filled to capacity as netting crews caught and spawned 1,021 quarts of walleye eggs at the Spirit Lake hatchery and more than 779 quarts at the Rathbun hatchery.
Walleyes were caught at East and West Okoboji Lakes, Spirit Lake, Storm Lake, Clear Lake, and Rathbun Lake from March 28 to April 8. The effort from all the lakes combined collected more than 250 million eggs.
This year’s walleye netting produced the third highest number of quarts of eggs from Storm Lake since the walleye broodstock collection efforts began here in 1988. “We harvested over 370 quarts of egg this year,” said Ben Wallace, DNR fisheries biologist. “In the previous five years, we haven’t harvested over 160 quarts in a given year.”
DNR fisheries staff reported a large number of 19-20 inch females in Storm Lake that hadn’t been tagged in previous years’ collections, meaning this was their first year through the hatchery. “We should continue to see these fish in future gillnetting seasons,” said Wallace. “All the fish we collected looked very healthy and healthier fish should produce good numbers of eggs.
At Spirit Lake, fisheries staff netted over 3,400 walleyes in nine nights on Big Spirit Lake and East and West Okoboji Lakes. The Spirit Lake Hatchery also cultures muskie and northern pike and staff collected 312 muskies and 407 northern pike providing eggs for hatching.
DNR fisheries biologist Jonathan Meerbeek said, “This year’s walleye requests from around the state were greater than in past years and resulted in a record number of eggs being incubated at our facilities.”
Meerbeek noted that the healthy broodstock populations in these important lakes are a result of investment of angler license dollars into research, monitoring, and stocking, “Without our angler’s investment into Iowa’s fisheries programs we simply wouldn’t have the great fishing we have throughout the state.”
The DNR plans to release more than 149 million walleye fry in May. While the majority of walleyes are stocked as fry, some are cultured in Iowa DNR hatcheries and stocked at different sizes. Over 1.1 million two-inch walleyes are expected to be stocked into lakes, rivers, and streams across the state this summer. Larger 6-9 inch fingerlings will be stocked in lakes later this fall.