Walleye eggs. (DNR photo)
Crews with the Iowa Department of Natural Resources Fisheries Bureau have been collecting walleye eggs for the next crop of the fish in the state’s lakes.
Chris Clouse helped with the collection on Lake Rathbun, and says they had a lot of success. “Roughly 120 million walleye eggs and we expect to get about a 75 percent hatch on those eggs — and that’ll give us about 90 million walleye fry to be stocked throughout the state,” he says.
He says the conditions as they capture the walleyes for the egg harvest really helped the process. “Well, we had extremely good netting this year and extremely good weather. The weather was really cooperative and so we were very efficient. And I don’t have the exact figure in front of me but I would say we handled about 600 to 700, female walleye and probably 800 male walleye,” Clouse says.
He says it doesn’t take long for the fish to develop. “Just in general about 14 days before the eggs start to eye up — and that means that they’re still in an egg form but you can see the little eyeball of the fish in the egg,” Clouse says. “And then they’ll hatch in about 21 days and then we’ll start stocking the fry throughout the state. We keep some of them here at the hatchery to grow out to larger sizes.”
Clouse says the stocking is important to keep the walleye population in the state’s lakes. “Unfortunately in Iowa for the most part, the walleye are unsuccessful in their spawning efforts. In other words, the fry and the eggs that they lay don’t don’t hatch or don’t survive in the wild,” he says. “And so primarily every walleye that is caught in Iowa except for the Mississippi River is stocked walleye.”
Clouse says walleye have become a favorite of anglers. “They may not be the number one sport fishing Iowa –l but they’re right up there at the top. A lot of our customers that are buying fishing licenses that’s what they really want to catch, is walleye,” he says. “But pan fish and large mouth bass and catfish are all still very popular as well.” They were able to collect many of the eggs they need from Lake Rathbun, but also collect walleye from Clear Lake and Storm Lake as well.