Just over twenty million fish were taken from nurseries and strategically placed in streams and lakes across the state.
Elyse Walter is a DNR spokeswoman. She said there’s more to stocking than just dumping fish in a river.
“They evaluate the habitat they evaluate the current populations of fish they evaluate how successful they think the fish stocked there will be and then we take that information and based on the inventory within our hatcheries we determine which of those requests or those prescriptions can be filled and to what extent.”
She said this is a bonus for Michigan’s fisheries.
“So by kinda piggybacking off the naturally reproducing populations it’s almost like an enhancement. So it’s sorta icing on the cake that were able to put even more fish into the system to allow anglers to have even more opportunities to pursue.”
Walter says this is the most fish the DNR has stocked in the past few years, and the department plans to stock an additional million fish in Michigan rivers and lakes through September.