TOPIC:

Don't know the facts but what if?
Mortality probably increases longer fish stay in truck.
Illinois hatchery probably has limited hours for truck to get loaded. maybe fish had to get picked up early in day? Gonna take a chance on keeping fish in truck for mechanical problem to kill more waiting for darkness? Driver might be subject to hours of service regulations? Big bosses might not want overtime for employees? Were lucky we have some local DNR that care and are interested. Don't know current data but Indiana has historically been 1 of the worst states for paying fish and game professionals so there not here for the money.

Mortality rate variables obviously can't be controlled, but there can be a little more effort put into stocking efforts, such as the after dark stocking that was done with the Chinook plants. What is the value of a stocking program when you are literally creating a feeding frenzy buffet line for the gulls? Sure, there are some that say if it's not the gulls, then it's the cormorants eating their fair share too. Either way, these browns were simply wasted money seeing these photo's. Thank God there are people that post this kind of stuff to shed light on bad management ideas. I hate to be critical of the DNR - they've done a ton of good lately between meetings, communication, and other interactions that have really showed their willingness to listen to sportsman. In this case though, there has to be another option to avoid this happening again.

Not good, why bother. Waste of time and money to raise these fish to feed the birds. We have to do better than this.. Release at night or maybe better yet, release fish into net pens and stock directly into lake at night.

You should send your picture to Cameron F. Clark., Director of the Indiana DNR. this is clearly a waste of time and money. That picture is worth a 1000 words and may make them rethink their current stocking practice.

I was there with Killshot and talking to the DNR employee he said he drove to Pekin , IL on Monday, spent the night, picked up the fish yesterday morning and drove to East Chicago. When we asked him why he was planting the fish during the day his reply was that they only stock kings at night. I don't know what it cost to drive to Pekin, spend the night, drive to East Chicago and plant the fish only to to see hundreds of birds feasting for hours! That's more government wasting fisherman's and tax payers money! I don't care if their planting Brown Trout or Carp the DNR should operate in a responsible manner!

Thanks for the picture Killshot. Sometimes a picture will say more than others have for years. Time for some changes instead of the same old stuff.

Lots of good questions and points raised here. The whole point of raising and stocking fish is so that they survive and return to the fishery, so I certainly understand everybody’s concern with issues immediately following stocking.

I’ll preface this by saying nothing about the brown trout stocking is ideal. They’re the Plymouth Rock strain, which is not a particularly well-performing strain. They’re only about 3.5 inches, which means no matter what they probably have fairly low survival. And they’re stocked directly in the harbor, during daylight.

However, they are bonus fish – we don’t have capacity to raise them in our hatchery, and we get extra fish that Illinois produces. All that it costs Indiana is supplying them with some Skamania eggs, and the staff time to go get the browns and stock them.

But that said, obviously anything we can do to boost survival is a good thing.

A few answers to some questions raised

1) I’ll forward the pic of the birds and some of the concerns to hatchery staff. They can only see the conditions when they are there stocking the fish, so if the birds show up after the fact, they won’t know unless they are alerted

2) Given that we are picking up the browns from Illinois, we have much less control over the timing of the process compared to fish in our own hatchery system. When Illinois DNR has the time to load their fish on our truck is what we go with. The very latest they can load our truck is early afternoon. Jake Wolf hatchery is about 3.5 hours from East Chicago with no traffic, and there’s always a chance for heavy Chicago-land traffic. The later in the day the fish are loaded (within the available window that Illinois staff can work to load our fish), the higher the chances are that traffic becomes an issue. Last year, the truck got stuck in Chicagoland traffic for over 2 hours. Thankfully there were no obvious issues to fish health in that particular incident, but there are legitimate concerns over stressing fish out and losing a significant chunk of them. We have to weigh the possibility of stocking ALL the fish stressed out, or the small chance of losing a significant chunk of them on the truck, versus some mortality from bird predation. It’s not exactly a black and white, clear cut answer. And certainly not as easy as “just stock at night”. There are real logistic constraints to our options with the brown trout that are inescapable.

3) The stocking pipe is deliberately not touching the water because of biosecurity issues. They try as hard as possible to not pick up anything from the body of water they stock, because it could come back on the truck to the hatchery. Such as a bacteria, virus, or invasive species. They obviously disinfect things, but they want to be absolutely sure they are as safe as possible, because those types of things can wreak havoc on hatcheries. Salmonids are stocked via airplane out west and survive very well. I promise a fall of several feet from the truck has almost zero impact on survival


4) The hatchery staff member was accurate in saying we were only stocking the kings at night, and that’s because of the above - we can control that chinook stocking process with entirely our staff, not dealing with Chicago traffic, long drives, and another agency’s staff.

5) Net pens would certainly be a good option for acclimation of the browns, and that’s something that had been getting kicked around internally and also I’ve had discussions with some anglers that call EC home. Even a 1- or 2 day acclimation with release at night would be something. Those discussions got sidelined for this spring because of Covid-19


6) If people truly think it’s a waste to stock browns at EC, I’d be open to proposals of where they should be stocked, or if browns should even be stocked at all (keep in mind these are bonus fish we don’t raise ourselves)

Sounds like given the logistical challenges of getting the fish there to be released at dusk / night time, having net pens at the ready for when the truck arrives would be ideal for future stockings. Give them a couple days to acclimate / imprint / de-stress then release at night time out in the lake. I'm sure you could find a volunteer resident boat or two there that would be willing to monitor the pens and drag them out for release.

Thanks for the detail Ben.

Ben,
what is the historical story behind the browns here?
What ports or areas over the years have tried to stock browns?
Would we be working with browns if we had to use are own hatchery space?
What is the average cost per brown looking at rate of return cost?
Has Portage ever had them stocked up river anywhere?
Did Michigan move there brown stocking north because of issues with browns not really working in the areas they have tried??
Does show how important a net pen could be if possible for EC.