Who decides to stock a lake with fish?

[blackonblackfx4]

Hey Outdoorsmen, I've been doing a bit of thinking of fish stocking in Alberta and doing quite a bit of reading of the lakes in and around Lac La Biche that were largely depleted of many species in the 20's-70's. It's a little sad the lakes got to that point but SRD has done a good job with some of the lake such as the re-stocking walleye efforts in Lac La Biche and close monitoring of other lakes such as shutting Pinehurst down to a tag system to preserve the fishery.


I've been looking more at Touchwood lake east of Lac La Biche in the Lakeland Rec. area which had Lake Trout but was fished out shortly after 1927. SRD had made some attempts in 67-68 using fingerlings dropped in at the campsite which was too shallow and many fingerlings died, as well as juvenile lake trout in 85-87. Since this time I have heard the odd story of people catching Lake Trout and would love it if you could PM me if you have. Maybe it has a population of Lakers in it?


I am really interested in who decides to spear head these projects, which I'm sure is done though SRD such as the stocking of Lac La Biche Lake? If anyone could give me any insight or a contact it would be greatly appreciated.

[Don Andersen]

Call your Regional Fisheries Biologist and ask about the stocking program.

Don

[Levy]

Its a few select organization like the AFGA and a few others that get reported to on SRD work and a few other things. From what I understood they have the largest influence on what happens other than First Nations, and the regional Biologist will have the last say.

Please do hound Jordan, i think its a good thing if the fisheries biologists see people wanting historically present fish populations restored. I have already asked Jordan Walker the lakeland Biologist about Touchwood's lake trout and the response was the lake likely won't sustain a lake trout population because there is no habitat left for them and its such a small lake. He said that and I asked him if there was a study done and unless Im remembering wrong he came to that conclusion without there being any studies done. He said it was a safe bet with the number of lakers stocking and not taking hold of the lake.

Im not entirely convinced for a few reasons. Im pretty sure Pierce lake is smaller and around the same depth and has supported a some what healthy lake trout fishery even when Cold lakes lake trout population was collapsed and Cold lake was referred to as the Dead Sea. Pierce lake may have a slightly more suitable trophic state, but Cold lake is Mesotrohpic-Oligiotrphic, so im pretty sure its Mestrophic like Touchwood. I also don't see how one of the largest and deepest lakes in the lakeland is a small lake. I have also caught tons of lake trout in lakes not even two km long in very similar climate in sask. What Im getting at is I have fished other and much smaller likely Mesotrophic lakes in similar climatic condition that have sustained healthy lake trout populations.
IMO alberta's fisheries management is on cruise control with the goal of staying on cruise control on the road to nowhere.
I think they didn't stock nearly enough fish when they did stock it, or way to small of fish and didn't stock it long enough. If your stocking 90 000 juvenile trout from a hatchery I don't think they are going to do that well, especially in such a large lake, with no survival skills. I think if they wanted to really see if the habitat was still their they would go out there once and month and measure DO concentrations, and temperatures from top to bottom of the lake for a year or two. Instead volunteers from ALMS do that on their own dime if they want to provide a baseline for the government Biologists who may or may not take their work into consideration.

If the habitat was still there I think it would be a great idea to transplant fish from Cold lakes estimated 480 000 lake trout. They would have already proven able to survive the wild unlike many hatchery fish, and likely be able to reproduce off the get go. But theres a problem with that. Cold lakes Laker populations may be up from an estimated 25 000 in 1985 but it was estimated that the harvest numbers are already above sustainable, never mind the accidental mortalities from the guys who like to go catch 20 to 50 lakers ever other weekend all winter.

I have stories that would make your skin crawl the other weekend I saw one vehicle haul around 80 lbs of lakers home... you know the old "My three to eight year old children caught three fifteen pounders story". Wonder how much of that thirty year old fish is going to get freezer burnt and pitched? I also had a stranger from edmonton come up to me after i release an 87cm laker and tell me i should keep them because Splake0 keeps all of them, and you would never fish them out. Don't know what he was complaining about... the fish was back in the water and he now had a chance to catch it.

This is an old article but i think anyone who fishes cold lake should give it a read before. http://www.coldlakesun.com/2011/05/0...ut-alberta-srd Anyways...

I got side tracked there but i hoped you gleaned something useful. PM me if you learn anything useful. If you get any meetings or learn of any meetings i would love to attend.

Also...I can't say for sure but I have also heard that Square lake may have once held a lake trout population, and know for a fact one SRD survey sites several lake trout as being caught either in or beside Wolf lake in 1956 by commercial netters. Whether or not that is a mistake I cannot say, but wouldn't be surprised seeing how deep it its and how deep magician and sapphire lakes are. Sapphire has 20 feet visibility on a hot august day when visibility is at its lowest in other lakes, sound like trout habitat to me.

Levy