Fws employee herds the last fish into the pond harvest kettle at the Genoa NFH.

Every June, the Genoa National Fish Hatchery (NFH) staff  drains a portion of the station’s outdoor rearing ponds in order to harvest walleye that were stocked only a month and a half prior as hatched fry.  Why so soon?  By maximizing the production in the ponds, the small fish eat themselves out of house and home.  A timely harvest is key to having many healthy walleye which are also large enough to survive in the wild.  Four hatchery ponds were stocked with a total of 475,000 walleye fry in early May 2008.  The fry came from the hatchery’s April spawning operation carried out on the Upper Mississippi River.  In addition to the Upper Miss. walleye, the Genoa NFH also reared strain specific walleye for the Lac Coutre Oreilles tribe near Spooner, Wis. for the first time this year.  After 44 days of growth in the facilities coolwater production ponds, the walleye grew to approximately 1.5 inches.  The ponds were drained in mid June with a total harvested number of 163,293, indicating a 34 percent survival rate.  Approximately 30,000 were stocked in Iowa waters, 58,083 went to Legend Lake for the Menominee Indian Reservation, and 3,000 were given to the Upper Mississippi River Science Center for research.  Lac Coutre Oreilles received 36,810 fingerlings, and the remaining fish (35,400) were retained on the station to support requests for advanced fingerlings (6 inch fish) for several tribal governments and to provide yearling host fish for the endangered Higgins Eye Pearlymussel as well as other state listed mussel species.