Walleye plant to improve future fishing

By Emily Mullen, Staff Writer
10/29/00 — Three Rivers Community News

CONSTANTINE - The St. Joe River has 160,000 new walleye fingerlings as the result of a joint-effort project by the Village of Constantine and the Colon Anglers Association to increase wildlife in area waters.

A report on the outcome of the project was recently given to village council members at a regular meeting by Jim Smith, president of the Colon Anglers Association.

Smith said the success of this year's walleye plantation project was a record for both the anglers association and St. Joe County.

"We put 65 percent of the fish we raised into the St. Joe River, which is phenomenal," Smith said.

The CAA planted a total of 160,000 into the St. Joe River early last May. From that total, a little over 100,000 walleye fingerlings lived.

On May 19, the walleye were removed from two reserve ponds they were being held in next to the village's old waste water treatment plant, and placed in the St. Joe River.

Fred Edinger, member of the anglers association and major participant in the project, said the fish were removed from the ponds ahead of schedule since they originally planned to transplant the fish on June 5.

"The fish were healthy and we had the biggest percent of fish survive the anglers association has ever had- the Department of Natural Resources hopes to get ratios like that," Edinger said.

Costing the county only $1,200, the walleye were retrieved from the Wolf Lake Fish Hatchery in Mattawan and deposited in the village's chemical-free reserve ponds to grow.

The hatchery breeds millions of fish in rows of tube-shaped tanks. Once they hatch, the fish, then called "fry" since they're no bigger than mosquitoes, are transported from the hatchery into the water.

Fish eggs are kept in water temperatures in the mid to high '50s in order to control the rate at which they hatch.

The warmer the water, the quicker the eggs will hatch. It usually takes walleye eggs a few days to a week to hatch.

Each holding 80,000 of the hatchlings, or fry, the walleye grew in the ponds until they reached fingerling size, which is about 1.125-1.5 inches long.

"We had to use irrigation pumps from local farmers in order to pump water out of the St. Joe River into the ponds," Edinger said.

He said water from the cement-based ponds seeped out at a rate of 1.5-2 feet each week, forcing them to consistently fill the ponds with water so the fish had enough food and oxygen to grow.

Pumping water from the St. Joe River into the ponds at a rate of 2-3 times a week, workers made sure there was enough water to sustain the fish. At their highest points, the treatment plant ponds are 5 feet deep, 4 feet in their most shallow spots.

Adding water to the ponds by pump is what actually made the fish grow to fingerling size in a much shorter amount of time than speculated.

"It was a very beneficial process because it brought in plankton, which the fish eat, and oxygen and other nutrients," Edinger said. "What looked like a disaster was really a blessing in disguise."

Within the first five days of their time spent in the ponds, the fry feed off their egg sacks before relying on the vegetation of the pond itself.

After about a week, Edinger said project workers used a special light in the water that attracts plankton. If fish surface the water to come to the food, they know the fish are still there and have sustained their development period.

"It's just our way of checking on the fish early, but you can do that at anytime," he said.

The walleye were taken out of the ponds after they reached 1.5 inches in length and planted into the St. Joe River.

Edinger said this prevents the fish from eating each other since the food supply in the small ponds became too small to feed the growing fish.

Looking out at the St. Joe River right in his backyard off of Withers Road in Constantine, Edinger views the spot every day where 38,000 of the fingerlings were planted.

Now sprawled out in various bodies of water along the river, including Sturgeon Lake and other area lakes in Colon, the walleye will grow to legal fishing size, or 15 inches, within the next 2-2.5 years.

With help from the DNR, Friends of the St. Joe River and other concerned community members, the Colon Anglers Association was able to complete the walleye project and get renewed with the village to continue the project next spring.

"We raise and transplant the walleye to be conservationists and to help the St. Joseph County fishery," Edinger said.

For more information on the St. Joe River or the walleye plantation project, call the Village of Constantine at (616) 435-2085, the DNR at (616) 685-6851.

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