(Orleans)– Gill netting operations for Walleye and Muskies on the Iowa Great Lakes began Friday night and are already winding down, thanks to some excellent numbers. Kim Hawkins, a DNR Fisheries Biologist and Manager of the Spirit Lake Fish Hatchery, says tonight (Mon.) will be the final night for gill netting this season. She says the quality and condition of the fish have been excellent…
“So our gill nets, usually they’re sized to catch fish that are 14 inches or larger. All of these females coming in are four to eight pounds. They’re really good looking fish. The males are really nice sized as well. We had some really nice muskies come in. Nothing really big and record-breaking but good numbers coming in too, for those. They’re pretty fun to see and it’s a great year class out there in the lake.”
And even though the gill netting will be done after tonight (Mon.), Hawkins says there will still be a lot going on for awhile yet at the fish hatchery…
“We still need to collect the eggs from some of the female walleyes that have come in that weren’t quite ready to give their eggs, so we’ll continue spawning processes until when we reach our quota which is about 580 quarts this season, and once we reach that then we’ll be releasing all of the rest of the fish that we might have captured and didn’t utilize back into the lakes. So probably in the next two to three days we’ll be getting rid of the walleyes, then the muskies will be kept until the week of April 20th. They need a little warmer temps to spawn and we’ll just hold onto them for another couple weeks and then we will do the whole spawning process with them, as well.”
She adds the fish hatchery in Orleans will still be open this (Mon.) evening but they will start going back to regular hours after that…
“Since we’re still netting tonight we will be open until 8:00 pm and then probably tomorrow we’ll be kind of slowly moving back staff into just the day shift and we’ll be doing our normal hours 8:00 to 4:00 either starting Tuesday or Wednesday. We will have updated hours definitely on our door, and once we let all the crews go then this weekend and the following weekends will also be back to normal hours and be closed.”
Hawkins says crews from as far away as Clear Lake, the Mississippi River and southern Iowa assist with gill netting each year on the Iowa Great Lakes.
