DNR stocks trout at Saxon Harbor

By RICHARD JENKINS

rjenkins@yourdailyglobe.com

SAXON, Wis. — Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources crews were at Saxon Harbor Tuesday, releasing brown trout as part of the department’s continuing effort to stock Lake Superior and provide a popular fishery for local anglers.

Approximately 27,000 Seeforellen brown trout — a specific strain of brown trout, according to the DNR’s website — were released into the lake just outside the harbor’s breakwall.

“(The brown trout fishery) became really popular a couple years ago when lake trout quotas were down, and … a lot of people switched to brown trout and were able to fish for brown trout,” said Brad Ray, the Lake Superior team supervisor with the DNR. “It’s become a really popular fishery — a popular near-shore fishery, the lake trout were more off shore and the brown trout are (closer).”‘

Along with stocking fish at Saxon Harbor, Ray said the DNR is also releasing brown trout in Superior, Ashland and Bayfield.

“We get a good spread of the brown trout in Wisconsin waters and then reports are they’ll go into Michigan and Michigan anglers are catching them as well,” he said. “So it’s provided a really good fishery for people.”

Approximately 165,000 brown trout will be added to the lake this year, according to Ray, with the Saxon Harbor number a little higher than normal as the DNR wasn’t able to release as many fish last year due to the ongoing construction at the marina.

He praised the Saxon Harbor Boating Club for its help in coordinating the stocking effort with the construction work rebuilding the marina after it was destroyed in the July 2016 storm.

The fish released in Tuesday’s stocking were spawned in the fall of 2017, according to Ray, and taken from Lake Michigan to a hatchery in Bayfield. They were transferred to a hatchery in Brule prior to their release, Ray said, due to space issues at the hatchery.

Stocking Seeforellen brown trout in Lake Superior is a newer initiative for the DNR, Ray said, based on the success of an effort in Lake Michigan.

“We’ve been stocking Seeforellen browns from Superior to Saxon Harbor since about 2009,” he said.

Unfortunately, the DNR has to continue stocking the fish each year as there has been little success in developing a naturally producing population in Lake Superior.

“Right now, what’s being stocked is basically a put, grow and take fishery,” Ray said, explaining that so far all indications are that the Seeforellens being caught are all fish that were transplanted into the lake.

He said there are naturalized brown trout in the lake, but they aren’t the Seeforellen strain.

Prior to their release, Ray said the stocked fish have a fin clipped so they can be differentiated from naturally born fish when caught.

He said the fish released Tuesday — which were approximately 5 inches long — will be the fish that anglers are pulling out of the lake in a couple years.

“We’re putting them in there today ... they’ll grow, and in a couple years we’ll hear reports of 30-inchers,” Ray said.