Lander – Recently 16,000 lbs or about 35,000 rainbow trout 9”-10” in length were stocked from the Dubois Hatchery into Boysen Reservoir. Stocking happened over multiple days with employees and volunteers netting fish out of tanks at the hatchery, loading them into buckets with water, weighing them, hoisting them up onto the flatbed semi-truck equipped with insulated tanks, and placing them into the oxygenated water. Fish were then transported and released the same day to Boysen Reservoir.
Rainbow trout are stocked into Boysen in the fall giving them two survival benefits. First, they have had longer to grow at the hatchery and so are larger in size, and secondly, the warm water fish that can predate on them (like walleye and sauger) are beginning to slow down their feeding.
Hopefully, this will make for good ice fishing all season long. Usually, walleye, sauger, and perch fishing is hot when the ice comes on, and rainbow trout continue to bite throughout the winter.
