For 4th year trout put into Wolf Creek
Published 2:13 pm Thursday, April 13, 2023
Waterville Area Fisheries Supervisor Craig Soupir hands a net of rainbow trout to Austin Parks, Recreation and Forestry Director Dave Merrill to put into Wolf Creek. Eric Johnson/photodesk@austindailyherald.com
Waterville Area Fisheries Supervisor Craig Soupir takes out a net full of rainbow trout that were to be stocked into Wolf Creek Thursday. Eric Johnson/photodesk@austindailyherald.com
Conservation technician Jessica Bulman puts rainbow trout into Todd Park’s Wolf Creek Thursday morning ahead of trout season which is this Saturday. Eric Johnson/photodesk@austindailyherald.com
Cedar River Watershed District watershed technician James Fett places rainbow trout into Wolf Creek Thursday morning. Eric Johnson/photodesk@austindailyherald.com
Rainbow trout are dumped into Wolf Creek Thursday morning ahead of the start of trout season this Saturday. Eric Johnson/photodesk@austindailyherald.com
|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
For the fourth year now, the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources has begun stocking Wolf Creek in Austin with rainbow trout.
On Thursday, 300 of the trout, classified as put-and-take fish because they can be harvested when trout season opens this Saturday, were put into Wolf. Another 300 trout will be stocked in the next couple weeks.
Craig Soupir, Waterville Area Fisheries Supervisor, said Thursday morning after the fish had been stocked that this latest effort to put trout into Wolf Creek has been a success in the previous three years.
“Most of it has been very successful,” Soupir said. “We’ve had good reports back from anglers that they’re first thankful that they are here and it’s a unique opportunity, but also that they have good catch rates.”
Soupir said that Wolf Creek is just one of three streams in the nine counties Waterville covers that have the right conditions to host trout — habitat and cooler groundwater fed flows.
There have also been reports of trout having survived into the winter, though Soupir suspects that is rare and most likely wouldn’t translate into a self-sustained body of water that would include spawning activity.
“It’s a small percentage of what we’re putting in here,” Soupir said. “It’s possible that as long as we have good groundwater flow that we have some pools in here that can support trout here all year long.”
However, Soupir went on to say that as spring rolls into summer water flow will slow and will reduce needed habitat to create a self-sustaining environment.
“It lacks the deeper pools,” he said.
The DNR has tried in the past to create a habitat for a sustained trout environment in the 1970s and 80s by using brown trout, but the populations never took hold.
