By Louie Stout
Last fall’s Indiana DNR assessment of the Pine and Stone Lake walleyes turned up a healthy, yet not overly abundant, population.
Biologists go into the lake each fall to determine survival of young fish planted a year ago. Those numbers were disappointing but not surprising.
There was high mortality in a private stocking done on the lake and Indiana’s fall stocking was done in low numbers due to limited availability a year ago.
“Also,” adds District Biologist Courtney Weldon, “it was still pretty warm when we did our survey, but we didn’t have much choice.”
The good news is she expects to find plenty of the 2024 fish when she returns this the fall because stocked numbers were good and the fish were sizable.
The majority of adult walleyes captured were two year olds from the 2022 stocking that should be legal size this season. She knows there are still some bigger and older fish in the system.
“If we can continue an aggressive fall stocking with larger (young) fish it will only get better,” she says.
The DNR began stocking larger fall fish in 2021. It’s been proven that fewer numbers of larger fish stocked in the fall vs. larger numbers of smaller spring fingerlings produce better results.
Weldon noted that the survey turned up several large bluegills and sunfish in Stone Lake and “a lot of good size bass weighing at least 4 pounds within the system.”
She and her crew plan to do a total lake survey sometime this season.