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Stocked trout ready for anglers

Waupaca River, Mirror Lake get fish

By Greg Seubert


Waupaca’s population just went up by almost 2,500.

That’s rainbow trout, not people.

The state Department of Natural Resources showed up April 24 and stocked the Waupaca River and Mirror Lake with 2,458 yearling trout just in time for Wisconsin’s inland fishing season, which opens Saturday, May 4.

That total includes 1,654 fish at three locations in the Waupaca River and another 804 in Mirror Lake. The fish average 8 to 10 inches in length, which makes them legal to catch in both bodies of water.

“Our goal is to always have these fish stocked before the opener,” said Jason Breeggemann, the DNR’s fisheries biologist for Waupaca, Shawano and Menominee counties.

“It’s a tradition for people to get out fishing on opening day,” he said. “It’s the same as deer hunting: you have to be out there on opening day. A lot of people expect these fish to be stocked and know where to go look for them. We do our best to make sure the fish are out there and available.”

The DNR also released 763 fish in Bass Lake south of Waupaca, 560 in Skunk Lake west of Waupaca, 536 in the Pigeon River in Clintonville and 495 in Little Long Lake near Marion.

The six water bodies have received trout stockings in the past.

Jason Breeggemann, the DNR’s fisheries biologist for Waupaca County, releases rainbow trout into the Waupaca River near the Shearer Street bridge in Waupaca. The DNR stocked nearly 1,700 trout into the Waupaca River April 24. Greg Seubert Photo

Finding habitat
“A couple of different things go into our selection of water bodies that get stocked and one is suitable habitat that’s available for the fish,” Breeggemann said. “Today, we’re stocking yearling rainbow trout. When we stock them into our lakes, we want to make sure they’re deep lakes that are going to have cool water with lots of oxygen in it so that the trout are able to survive during the summer when surface water temps start to rise.

“We want to look for streams that are going to have cooler water, but we also like to try and find areas that are really popular,” he added. “We’re looking for popular areas that are near population centers because we want as many of these fish to be harvested as possible. That’s the whole intent for us to stock these fish: to provide fishing opportunities.”

The fish came from the Osceola hatchery in western Wisconsin and are among the 180,000 yearling rainbows scheduled to be stocked throughout Wisconsin this spring.

Most of the stocked fish will remain close to the release location. The Waupaca River received its stocking in Riverview and Riverside parks and near the Shearer Street bridge.

“We try to stock the fish, especially these yearling rainbow trout, as close to the opener as we can to give them the least amount of time possible to spread out,” Breeggemann said. “We can make sure that anglers can target them and have pretty good success rates.”

The DNR’s stocking truck will return to the area this fall, as the Waupaca River is scheduled to receive 380 adult brown trout, with another 75 earmarked for Bass Lake, according to Breeggemann.

“Historically, we’ve stocked adult brown trout in the Waupaca River and Bass Lake,” he said. “We primarily stock the Waupaca River because of its location. It’s probably one of the more popular trout fishing spots in the area. It’s easily accessible, there are lots of public parks along that section and there are a lot of people around that can take advantage of that resource through fishing. We stock Bass Lake in the fall to provide an ice fishing opportunity for large brown trout.”

Trout are not naturally reproducing in lakes and rivers and streams that receive stocked fish, Breeggemann said.

“They’re stocked solely to provide a fishery,” he said. “There are plenty of trout streams in the area that have natural reproduction and we try not to stock these hatchery-raised fish into those streams because we don’t want them to be reproducing and introducing the hatchery domestic genetic strain into our wild population. We stock them in areas that are not going to have proper habitat for natural reproduction. It’s primarily just stocked trout in these areas.”

There is no natural reproduction of rainbow trout in the Waupaca River downstream from the dam that forms the millpond on Waupaca’s north side.

“If you go upstream from that dam, there is a naturally reproducing brown trout and brook trout population,” Breeggemann said. “We only stock downstream of the dam in Waupaca.”

The DNR has identified hundreds of stocking locations throughout Wisconsin.

“We’ve located certain water bodies that have good habitat conditions,” Breeggemann said. “We know the fish will survive. The anglers know where to go to find those fish. If we were constantly moving the water bodies that we were stocking every year, it’d be a lot more difficult for anglers to figure out where we were planting fish. We try to keep the same water bodies stocked because anglers know they can go back to the same location year after year to target fish and they should be there.

“We raise a lot of catchable-sized trout at our hatcheries and they get stocked at various locations all over the state,” he said. “If you have questions about which water bodies are stocked, we list that information on our website. You can also contact a local biologist because they know what water bodies are stocked.”

A complete list of stocking locations can be found on the DNR’s website, dnr.wi.gov.

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More than 1,600 rainbow trout, including this one, now have a new home in the Waupaca River. The DNR stocked the fish in the river April 24. Mirror Lake in Waupaca also received 804 fish. Greg Seubert Photo

Easy to catch
“The stocked water bodies are definitely good places to get started even for novice anglers,” Breeggemann said. “These fish are raised in hatcheries and they’re domestic trout, so they’re fairly used to people. They’re less shy than your wild trout, so they’re easier to catch than wild trout. Experienced anglers like to catch them because they can catch a bunch of them, but it’s a good opportunity to get kids started because they’re fairly easy to catch.”

A majority of the stocked fish are harvested early in the season, Breeggemann said.

“Most of the harvest of these fish takes place early,” he said. “It might get prolonged a little bit into the season on some of the lakes, especially on a lake like Skunk Lake because there is no boat access. We do get reports on some of the lakes of people catching these fish in the winter. They’ll hang out on the cool water all summer long and be available to ice anglers. In the rivers, most of the harvest takes place in the first couple weeks of the season.”

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