OVER 15,000 LAKE TROUT STOCKED IN RED LAKE
New Hope for the Lake Trout population

Two-year old lake trout in a boat holding tank on their way back home to the waters of Red Lake

RED LAKE – Over 15,000 lake trout have been stocked in Red Lake as part of a 10 year rehabilitation program.

On May 16, 2005, Ministry of Natural Resources (MNR) staff and volunteers stocked Red Lake with 15,698 two-year old fish that had been raised from eggs taken from the lake in 2003.
 

Dan Baughman of Bow Narrows Camp, a major partner in the Red Lake Trout Project, takes part in the stocking initiative by transferring fish from the hatchery truck to the boats.

Myles Perchuk, Ministry of Natural Resources Red Lake District Integrated Resource Management Technician, releasing a dip net full of two year old Red Lake trout into their waters of origin.

Placer Dome Canada – Campbell Mine’s Environmental Manager, Dave Gelderland with his children Kyle and Jessica returning the lake trout to Red Lake.  The mine has been an instrumental partner in the Red Lake Trout Project.

The fish were stocked near lake trout spawning shoals that had shown good egg survival during past egg incubation studies. The ministry hopes that the fish will use these spawning shoals when they begin to reproduce.

“Stocking was very successful,” said Nadine Thebeau, Ministry of Natural Resources Red Lake District Biologist. “MNR is grateful to Dan and Josh Baughman of Bow Narrows camp, not only for volunteering their time and boat for the stocking, but for being an instrumental partner in this project from the beginning.”

Problems with the lake trout population were discovered in 2001 when MNR conducted a lake trout population survey in Red Lake and found that there were very few fish under the age of 11. Since then, the ministry has conducted various studies to find the cause and has worked towards ensuring the sustainability of the lake trout on Red Lake.

In an effort to identify if the eggs or their capacity to develop normally was at the root of the recruitment failure, MNR staff conducted the first spawn collection on Pipestone Bay in 2003. Some of the eggs were sent to the Chatsworth Fish Culture Station for observation in the quarantine unit and others were sent to various labs for analysis. The rest of the eggs collected were placed in incubators at 4 spawning shoals in the lake to hatch naturally. This egg viability study was repeated more extensively in 2004. Eggs were sent to the Dorion Fish Culture Station for observation and 170 incubators were placed in 18 different sites on Red Lake.

As well, the ministry has taken various samples from different areas of the lake to determine if the egg mortality could be linked to a specific cause. Placer Dome Canada’s Campbell Mine, another instrumental partner in the success of this project, provided funding for the analysis of the water samples.

“The eggs at the hatchery and at most incubator shoal sites on the lake developed normally” said Thebeau. “However, there appears to be some environmental conditions around the major spawning shoals in Pipestone Bay that kill the eggs within weeks. Unfortunately, these shoals have been identified as the main spawning sites for the Red Lake trout.”

To ensure the long-term sustainability of the lake trout population in Red Lake the ministry will:
• Continue to study the cause of the mortality of the eggs in Pipestone Bay
• Start a 10-year rehabilitation plan by stocking Red Lake with two-year old trout raised at the hatchery from eggs collected in Pipestone Bay
o Efforts will be made to get these new young fish to use spawning shoals outside of Pipestone Bay

Although the fish were kept at Chatsworth Fish Culture Station for the first year of the study, they were transferred to Dorion Fish Culture Station for the second. In the future all the stocking will be from Dorion using eggs taken from Red Lake.

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