Summer flooding that allowed some of the Iowa Department of Natural Resources, or DNR, trout stock to swim away will cut the number of fish releases at Scott County’s West Lake from three to two.
The first release was in November and a second will be in the spring, after the ice clears. A release in January will not be held because of the West Lake ice quality.
“We opted to do that because we don’t get good ice there,” said Chad Dolan, a DNR fisheries biologist. “A lot of times you just have an ice shelf.”
To ensure that trout releases would happen, Iowa received stock from natural resources departments in Illinois, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and West Virginia as well as the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
The West Lake releases have been popular since they began in 2006, drawing 80 to 350 anglers, depending on the weather, said Marc Miller, deputy director of the Scott County Conservation Department.
“Since we started doing the trout fishing, the number of anglers in the fall and spring has increased,” he said. “The number of ice fishermen has increased dramatically.”
When flooding was predicted, DNR workers took steps to try to prevent the loss of trout stock at the Manchester, Iowa, fish hatchery by blocking entry points with chicken wire and moving some of the stock to unaffected fisheries. That did not prevent the loss, though.
Some of the trout were contained to a pond and recaptured, Dolan said.
“Trout fishing’s pretty good on the Turkey River,” he said. “We may have lost them from the hatchery, but we are still providing a fishing opportunity for somebody, so it isn’t a total loss.”
In the past, 3,000 trout were released each time, but the next release will be 1,800. The good news, Dolan said, is that the fish are bigger because there are fewer and there is more food available to them.
Miller says trout, a cold-water fish, continue to be caught well after the early summer release at West Lake.
“We haven’t had the die-off,” he said. “We’ve had the trout going from 10-12 inches and about three pounds up to six-seven pounds.”
Dolan suspects a spring must feed into the lake to provide the cold water source the trout need.
Kurt Allemeier can be contacted at (563) 383-2360 or kallemeier@qctimes.com.
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