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IDNR Report
Indiana’s Fish of the Year program grew again in 2021, with anglers submitting a record 117 entries from 59 different individuals. That marks the fifth consecutive year with a record number of entries.
The awards are given to those anglers who document the fish they catch and submit to the Indiana DNR. They don’t always indicate the biggest fish caught in the state as some of those go unreported.
The complete list can be found at www.in.gov.
Northern Indiana produced several of the top catches, including a 22.5-inch largemouth bass caught by Brock Yoder from a private lake in Elkhart County. Yoder reported he caught the fish on spinning tackle with a creature bait. No other details were reported.
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Indiana Conservation Officer Dustin Whitehead has been selected the 2021 District 1 Officer of the Year.
Whitehead is assigned to Elkhart County and has been a conservation officer since 2009. He was featured in a recent Michiana Outdoors News feature (www./michianaoutdoorsnews.com/columnists/louie-s-column/3333-tip-program-helps-dnr-bust-fish-and-game-poachers) about the Indiana Turn In a Poacher program in which he got two convictions.
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IDNR Report
Indiana Conservation Officer Alex Toth has been selected the 2021 District 10 Officer of the Year.
Toth is assigned to LaPorte County and has been a conservation officer since 2017.
In addition to his normal duties as a field officer, he also serves as a public safety diver and is a passenger-for-hire inspector.Â
District 10 includes Porter, LaPorte, Newton, Lake, Pulaski, Jasper and Starke counties in northeast Indiana.
The district award puts Toth in the running for the Pitzer Award, which is given to the top overall conservation officer in the state of Indiana and selected from the 10 district award winners.
The Pitzer award is named after Indiana Conservation Officer James D. Pitzer, who was fatally shot while investigating illegal hunting activity on Jan. 2, 1961, in Jay County.
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(To see a full list of the new fishing/hunting/trapping fees click here.)
IDNR Report
For the first time since 2006, Indiana DNR Division of Fish & Wildlife (DFW) has increased fees for hunting, fishing, and trapping licenses. Commercial license fees also increase, some for the first time since the 1980s.
The increases will be applied to personal licenses starting with the 2022-2023 license year (April 1, 2022 – March 31, 2023) that will go on sale in January. The fee increase does not affect licenses for the remainder of the 2021-2022 license years (April 1, 2021 – March 31, 2022), even if those licenses are purchased after Jan. 1.
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IDNR Report
A hunter is hospitalized after his boat sank on Webster Lake this morning.
At approximately 11:16 a.m., Kosciusko County Dispatch Center was contacted by a residential alarm company after they were alerted to an unauthorized residential entry to a home on Webster Lake.
Despite frigid temperatures and wind gusts forecast to reach up to 50 miles per hour, Trenton Stackhouse, 27, of Milford and Darick Stiles, 27, of Warsaw, set out to waterfowl hunt on Webster Lake near Epworth Forest.
After getting underway, the men quickly realized the conditions were too difficult to overcome.