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Hook and Hunting: Spring Fish Stocking

Right now is the best time to restock fish in Michigan waterways, and we caught up with the Harrietta Fish Hatchery Thursday to see how it’s going.

The hatchery releases more than a million fish a year used to stock 330 sites in the state. 

The fish spend about 16 months here before release, helping replenish areas that don’t have a natural reproduction habitat, stabilize populations and helping anglers’ odds.

And it’s always changing.

“There’s a lot of studies that we do to look at the prey-predator relationship, so we want to make sure we’re in the balance between that. So if we have too many prey we’ll stock a few more. If that prey number goes down a little bit we stock a little bit less, so we can do studies to help eliminate some of that to keep it even balance across the ecosystem,” explained John Jackoviak, a hatchery biologist.

Right now is the best time to release the fish because as temperatures rise there will soon be an influx of food sources.

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