(Orleans)– Gillnetting operations on the Iowa Great Lakes have concluded for another year. Kim Hawkins, a fisheries manager with the Iowa DNR’s state fish hatchery in Orleans, says everything went really well…
“We actually captured all of the walleyes we needed in two nights which is almost another record. We caught about 900 fish a night and brought them into the hatchery and we were done netting for the season, so that was pretty impressive for us.”
Hawkins goes on to explain how that compares with previous years…
“Usually it takes three or four nights. We’ve had more boats out on the lake to do that capturing and this year we decreased our boat numbers down to four DNR crews and four boats. The population on Big Spirit Lake is just so great that it’s still not taking too long to get all those fish that we need to meet our egg requests.”
She adds the quality of the fish was excellent…
“We had a lot of those females coming in that in that 20 inch plus all the way up to 30 inches. They had really rotund bellies this year and good egg production so we only took about 400 or 500 of those fish and took eggs from them and brought them back to the lake within three days of them coming into the hatchery.”
“We’ll have some muskie brood stock left in our hatchery for another day or two. We have to process them through the research team. They measure each fish prior to release back into the lake.”
Hawkins says that process will likely take a couple of days. She adds the fish hatchery, which had been open extended hours during the walleye and northern pike operations, has gone back to normal hours.
