Improvements At Wisconsin’s Lac Du Flambeau Hatchery Help Walleye

By FishSens Staff on March 2, 2016

After 30 years of use, the original fish pond liners at the Lac du Flambeau Tribe’s fish hatchery in Wisconsin had fallen into disrepair. But thanks to a partnership with the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Natural Resources Conservation Service, the liners have been repaired, according to a blog post from the USDA.

The newly renovated ponds will help with the breeding and raising of walleye, tribal resource managers say. Rearing more walleye to provide sustainable stocks of the fish is important for maintaining good fishing in the reservation’s waters.

But that wasn’t the only renovation work that was done. The USDA partnership also yielded more improvements that should help the tribal fish hatchery to keep pumping out walleye for years to come. Those include a large-scale reconstruction effort that created six large ponds, each with more than seven acres of surface area. There are also two new fish-gathering kettles that eliminate the work of having to harvest fish from each pond individually.

Over the past 30 years, the tribal fish hatchery has restocked lakes in the region with more than 415 million walleye. The newly improved facilities should help resource managers there keep up that work far into the future.