(Orleans)– Annual rite of spring is getting underway on the Iowa Great Lakes. Mike Hawkins, a Regional Fisheries Management Supervisor for the Iowa Department of Natural Resources, says gillnetting operations for northern pike are getting underway on Big Spirit Lake…
“Crews set nets yesterday, on Sunday, for some northern pike. They usually collect those up in the Buffalo Run area, the Hales Slough area, places where we have some incoming water and northern pike are trying to get up into those shallow, marshy areas to spawn. So we’ll be collecting those over the next couple of days, depending on how that goes, and then spawning the northern pike. They’re the first to go.”
Hawkins says the main gillnetting operations for walleye will likely get underway somewhere around April 8th or 10th, depending upon conditions. At that point he says the fish hatchery in Orleans will once again be open additional hours for the public to view the operations.
