04-17-2025, 03:00 PM
(This post was last modified: 04-17-2025, 03:04 PM by wiperhunter2.)
I've been emailing Chris Penne, with questions about this years walleye spawn and this is some of the info I've received:
From what Taylor (our reservoir biologist) has told me, we've already stocked our quota of 2.5 million walleye fry for Willard. We're going to take a couple hundred thousand more from this last spawn and stock those as well. We were also getting those extra eggs yesterday to make up for some poor hatching and survival of the triploid fish that are raised for other parts of the state to fingerling size. So we needed a few more eggs for those triploid fingerling fish. I haven't heard yet whether our hatchery staff spawned everything we gave them yesterday or whether they just took what was needed for the late run Willard fry and triploid needs and then put the rest of the fish back without spawning them -this time of year we're all running a lot of different directions trying to keep up with spring fieldwork, stocking coordination meetings and more. We're communicating well, that's just not something I needed to know so I'm not aware of it yet. To my knowledge, if they did spawn everything we gave them, those extra fish could go to other waters such as Yuba, DMAD, etc.
Taylor has also said Willard may be getting an extra load of 3" fingerling walleye this summer. This is the first year the Logan Hatchery is raising walleye fingerlings and they are looking to do a full tank/batch of fish to really test their capabilities, so while these fingerlings may be excess to our needs, they're going to see how they do raising them and we'll take what they give us. It's uncertain whether the 3" walleye fingerlings will do well in Willard as they may be stocked in the heat of summer and may be a bit behind on size compared to the fish that were stocked as fry and have been growing in the reservoir. Since this is the Logan Hatchery's first time raising them, there could be kinks and setbacks, so we'll see how many we get when summer rolls around and how those fish do.
Chris
From what Taylor (our reservoir biologist) has told me, we've already stocked our quota of 2.5 million walleye fry for Willard. We're going to take a couple hundred thousand more from this last spawn and stock those as well. We were also getting those extra eggs yesterday to make up for some poor hatching and survival of the triploid fish that are raised for other parts of the state to fingerling size. So we needed a few more eggs for those triploid fingerling fish. I haven't heard yet whether our hatchery staff spawned everything we gave them yesterday or whether they just took what was needed for the late run Willard fry and triploid needs and then put the rest of the fish back without spawning them -this time of year we're all running a lot of different directions trying to keep up with spring fieldwork, stocking coordination meetings and more. We're communicating well, that's just not something I needed to know so I'm not aware of it yet. To my knowledge, if they did spawn everything we gave them, those extra fish could go to other waters such as Yuba, DMAD, etc.
Taylor has also said Willard may be getting an extra load of 3" fingerling walleye this summer. This is the first year the Logan Hatchery is raising walleye fingerlings and they are looking to do a full tank/batch of fish to really test their capabilities, so while these fingerlings may be excess to our needs, they're going to see how they do raising them and we'll take what they give us. It's uncertain whether the 3" walleye fingerlings will do well in Willard as they may be stocked in the heat of summer and may be a bit behind on size compared to the fish that were stocked as fry and have been growing in the reservoir. Since this is the Logan Hatchery's first time raising them, there could be kinks and setbacks, so we'll see how many we get when summer rolls around and how those fish do.
Chris