Green Bay FRO biologists Ted Eggebraaten, Stacy Gilmore, and Dale Hanson processed more than 1,500 coded wire tagged lake trout from Lake Michigan in 2006. 

The lake trout were marked with tiny wire tags (CWT’s) and an adipose clip prior to being stocked. 

Assessment surveys and commercial\creel monitoring efforts on Lake Michigan are used to recapture some of these marked fish. 

Lake trout heads are retained from the adipose clipped fish to enable biologists to extract the CWT’s from the fish’s snout.  The CWT’s contain codes that allow biologists to determine stocking location, stocking year, and strain information.  This data can be useful in evaluating lake trout growth, movement, and survival.