The Mass Marking Crew at Pendill's Creek NFH. (Front Row, Marjorie Babcock, Nancy and Terry Edney Back Row, Allen Lane, Pat McGrail, Ron Johnson, Elliot Hoffman, Aaron Stallman) - Photo Credit: Curt Friez

Elliot Hoffman and Allen Lane, Mass Marking Biologists, from the Green Bay Fish and Wildlife Conservation Office completed coded wire tagging (CWT) of 1.2 million lake trout at Pendill’s Creek National Fish Hatchery (NFH) near Brimley, Michigan on the southern shores of Lake Superior. Tagging took place August 9 through August 25, with an average through put for the two trailers of 5706/hr. The lake trout are part of a project to reestablish lake trout in Lake Michigan and Huron, which were coded wire tagged and marked with an adipose fin clip for later identification.
The fish with CWT will provide vital information for state and federal managers about strain survival, age, movement, natural reproduction, and stocking location for the fish. These fish are part of a project to tag and mark all salmon and trout species stocked into lakes Michigan and Huron. The Fish and Wildlife Service provides mass marking to states and federal hatcheries to assist with restoring native lake trout and help the states manage fisheries for non-native salmon. Managers are able to use information gathered from recovered tags to make sound management decisions.
The lake trout are tagged by a fully automated trailer developed by Northwest Marine Technology (NMT) located on Shaw Island, Washington. The computer operated system is contained in a 44 ft. trailer which can clip an adipose fin and inject a decimal coded wire tag in the nose of the fish. The Autofish system can process up to 7,000 fish per hour. The adipose clip allows anglers to recognize that it is a tagged fish when captured. When data is collected from a removed tag, it will be combined with information from other tagged and untagged fish to determine movements, rates of reproduction, and relative contributions to fisheries. The Fish and Wildlife office in Green Bay, Wisconsin currently has 4 trailers being utilized at state and federal hatcheries. The biologists will also be tagging lake trout at both the Jordon River and Iron River federal hatcheries. Earlier this fall tagging operations took place at Marquette state hatchery, Michigan where 288,472 lake trout were tagged. The spring of 2011 4.7 million Chinook salmon were tagged at 7 different state hatcheries located in Illinois, Indiana, Wisconsin, and Michigan.