TOPIC:

Does anyone know how to find the yearly stocking reports? The search function on the DNR website is not showing everything and is a pain in the butt to use. With the way they are eliminating some area and alternating sites now, it’d be nice info to have readily available. I’m pretty sure there were no kings stocked to return to Trail/MC this fall and that going forward there will be no kings stocked in lake county. Can anybody help me out?

In 2016 there were 204,000 chinooks stocked in Indiana (69,000 in Little Cal, 67,000 at East Chicago, 68,000 in Trail Creek)




In 2017 there were 63,000 chinooks stocked and they all went into Trail Creek



In 2018 there were 67,500 stocked and they all went in the Little Cal

Trail creek run should be slightly better with "4-year-olds dominating," Portage run should be mostly 3-year olds.

Thanks BN, where’d you find the info? When I tried on the DNR tool, it wasn’t showing up. I tried searching by county, by species, and by body of water leaving the other parameters blank. It only showed 2015 data. Next question is do the bulk of those stocked fish return 2 or 3 years later? I was under the impression that EC and MC weren’t going to get much of any return this year. Which of course sucks because they’re far and away better to fish from shore...

www.glfc.org/fishstocking/exactsearch.htm

I got the info from Ben, the DNR Lake Michigan biologist, for a column I was writing. Anyway, things should be evenly split (according to stocking numbers) between EC, Portage and MC this year.. Last year for EC. However, those fish now mature (almost) 4 year olds, stocked in 2016 were stocked in the EC marina instead of at the Hole in the Wall (ancient history) or at Buffington, several years before that. Buffington stockings never played out that well. It will be interesting to see if the EC marina stocking fares any better.

Thank u for this info! This will be my first season to fish the run and was kinda trying to think of how to do this.

Do u think the fish out if ec are already starting or is it to early to truly tell?

It’s time. Tonight is ideal. Wish i could go. I assumed they were stocked at age 1 and the bulk would return in two years as 3yo fish. Last fall was the best return I’ve seen at EC in probably 20years. I hope it’s even better this year. I have the ability to take the boat any time, but catching them from a pier is just so much more fun, and convenient, and the comraderie of the pier is great.

So would u fish the wall? Literally like spring coho? Or would u be even closer to the marina? Thanks in advance

Fall fishing a night and day different to spring in my opinion. Spring is a lot of little fish that are feeding. Fall is a few big fish that have stopped feeding. My best fall fishing has always centered on choke points. Find out where the fish are going and focus on areas where they have to get through a bottle neck. Sometimes that choke point is vertical, like drop offs, or it can be a mud line or temp change. Find those sharp transition zones and pound them. Fall fish, especially kings seem to like to hug the bottom.

Good tip from SouthShore. Fall Kings like to porpoise and jump out of the water but very rarely hit a surface bait. Work deep cranks or glow spoons across the bottom half for sure.