South central Minnesota may not be a land of loons, dark pine forests and pristine waters but one only has to glance at a map to understand why many anglers still choose the Mankato area as an angling destination.
Within an hour's drive are scores of lakes teeming with a variety of fish species to angle for. Bass, panfish, northerns, catfish, bullheads, even muskellunge call south-central Minnesota waters home. But during the recent Minnesota inland waters opener, walleye are at the top of most anglers' catch list.
While many roads lead to distant walleye Meccas like Leech Lake, Lake Mille Lacs and Lake Winnibigoshish, the road to a walleye dinner can be a lot shorter for anglers in this part of the state. With a few exceptions, walleyes are the result of stocking rather than natural reproduction on area lakes.
Over in Waterville, where the Department of Natural Resources has operated a fish hatchery along the shore of Lake Tetonka for years, not that long ago the egg batteries were brimming with millions of fertilized walleye and northern eggs percolating in the carefully controlled and tempered lake water.
Today, they stand empty, the millions of walleye and northern hatched fry already having been transported to some of the 100 or so lakes that the Waterville hatchery serves in its nine-county area.
"We used to hatch from 30 million to 35 million walleye fry annually but now it's up to 42 million," said Hugh Valiant, the hatchery supervisor.
Some of the fry, so small it takes thousands of them to weigh a pound, were put directly into fishing lakes immediately after hatching while others were placed in shallow lakes not typically known as fishing lakes where they will grow by this fall into six-inch fingerlings.
Those fish then will be trapped and placed into other lakes that provide more stable environments. Valiant said the public tends to have more confidence in the success of fingerling stockings, probably because they look like a fish.
"Old textbook DNR held that fry tended to work better in shallow, more turbid waters while lakes like Frances and Washington where their bass-panfish populations would do better with fingerlings," he said.
In recent years, however, stocking efforts have been focused more on stocking walleye fry in all area lakes.
"We're using more fry stockings on area lakes, and we've been pretty successful in lakes where fingerlings might have seemed to be the way to go in the past," he said.
While stocking fingerlings at the accepted rates can establish a fishable walleye presence, the results from fry stockings, though more erratic, can be phenomenal when they are successful. "You can really hit the ball over the fence," he said. "When it works, it works in a big way."
For example, the great walleye angling on Lake Washington five years ago and the incredible walleye fishing on Scotch Lake four years ago were the result of fry stockings.
Growth rates can vary depending on forage availability and other factors, Valiant said, but it's generally held that walleye stocked in area lakes attain 14 inches, a "keeper" walleye, in three growing seasons.
The stocking activity and the most recent fish population and size assessments for all Minnesota lakes can be found using the DNR's Lake Finder at www.dnr.state.mn.us.
...
John Cross is a Mankato Free Press staff writer. Contact him at (507) 344-6376 or jcross@mankatofreepress.com.
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The Outdoors: DNR stocking boosts walleye quality of area lakes
Originally published in the June 11, 2010, print edition.
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