Recently hired Mass Marking Fishery Biologists Kevin Pankow (left background) and Elliot Hoffman (right foreground) operate the AutoFish™ Trailer. (U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service photo by Jim Webster) - Photo Credit: n/a

Staff from the Great Lakes Mass Marking program, headquartered at the Green Bay Fish and Wildlife Conservation Office, recently completed the first lake trout marking project of 2011 at the Marquette State Fish Hatchery in Michigan. Lake trout have been manually marked with fin-clips in the past by Michigan Department of Natural Resources (MIDNR) staff, but this is the first year that the Service has tagged state-reared lake trout, and used an automated tagging trailer designed to rapidly coded wire-tag and adipose fin-clip salmon and trout. The AutoFish trailer is manufactured by Northwest Marine Technology (NMT) and is one of four automated trailers operated by the Service to tag and fin-clip salmon and trout stocked into the Great Lakes. Fishery Biologist Jim Webster led the project and trained Kevin Pankow and Elliot Hoffman, two recently hired Fishery Biologists for the Mass Marking program. The team marked 288,472 Seneca Lake Wild strain lake trout from June 19-23. These fish will be stocked next spring in 1836 Treaty waters in Lakes Michigan and Huron by MIDNR , and will contain a unique coded wire tag to track their contribution to the fishery. Brian Toews, from NMT, joined the team to assist in training and to install upgrades to the AutoFish trailer. The Great Lakes Mass Marking program is in its second season of operation. In addition to the lake trout marked at Marquette State Fish Hatchery, the team marked nearly 4.7 million Chinook salmon at state hatcheries in Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana and Michigan this spring. During August-October, the team will travel to four National Fish Hatcheries in Michigan, Wisconsin and Vermont to tag about 5.3 million lake trout for the restoration programs on Lakes Michigan, Huron, Erie and Ontario. The recovery of tagged fish that are stocked in many unique groups allows biologists to determine the efficacy of stocking methods, strains, and sizes to meet the needs of developing self-sustaining lake trout populations in the Great Lakes.