Mass Marking biologist, Allen Lane, from the Green Bay FWCO completed marking and tagging operations at Wolf Lake State Fish hatchery, Mattawan, Michigan that began on March 15^th and ended on April 7th.  This hatchery is owned and operated by the Michigan Department of Natural Resources. 

About 938,000 Chinook salmon were coded wired tagged and marked with an adipose clip.  These fish are part of a project to tag and mark all Chinook salmon being stocked into lakes Michigan and Huron to measure post release survival and natural reproduction.  The Fish and Wildlife Service provides mass marking to states, federal, and tribal hatcheries to assist with restoring native lake trout and brook trout and help the states manage fisheries for non-native salmon and trout Managers are able to use information gathered from recovered tags to making sound management.

The Fish and Wildlife Service is utilizing the AutoFish system developed by Northwest Marine Technology Inc. to mark about 4.2 million Chinook salmon this spring.    The tagging will occur this spring at 7 different state hatcheries in Illinois, Indiana, Wisconsin and Michigan.  The AutoFish system can rapidly and accurately inject a decimal coded tag into the nose of a fish and an adipose fin clip so that tagged fish can be recognized later when it’s recaptured by an angler.  

When the tag is removed and read, it will be combined with information from other tagged and untagged fish to determine movements, rates of reproduction, and relative contributions to fisheries. The computer operated system is contained in a 44 foot trailer and is fully automated, and can clip and tag up to 7500 fish per hour.   The Service will tag about 4.7 million lake trout at three federal hatcheries in the fall to meet similar information needs.