Hatchery staff unload lake trout fry to raceways at Pendills Creek NFH, - FWS photo.

Pendills Creek National Fish Hatchery received more than 975,000 lake trout fry from Jordan River NFH, this year. The fish were transferred in fish trucks by staff from Jordan River NFH, Pendills Creek NFH and Sullivan Creek NFH, from June through July.

Lake trout production is a group effort between several of the Service’s national fish hatcheries. These particular lake trout fry began their lives last fall, at Sullivan Creek NFH, located in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. Sullivan Creek NFH is one of Region 3’s two lake trout brood stock rearing facilities, and produces at least 3 million eyed eggs per year for the region’s Lake Trout Restoration Program.

These eggs, produced at Sullivan’s, were transferred to Jordan River NFH near Elmira, Michigan, where they spent the earliest stages in egg jars, and then were transferred to indoor rearing tanks.

Dates are then scheduled to transfer the fry back to Pendills Creek NFH’s lake trout production facility. There they continue to grow until the next spring, when they will be stocked out as yearlings to Lakes Michigan and Huron for lake trout restoration.

The fry appear to be adjusting well and Pendills Creek NFH hopes to stock 900,000 or more lake trout yearlings into Lake Michigan and Lake Huron next spring and early summer.