This year’s Lake Nipissing walleye restocking effort, which started April 20, has been completed. The Lake Nipissing Stakeholders Association says the last of the walleye fry were deposited just before dark on Thursday. They were granted a permit to harvest two million walleye eggs for the purpose of restocking the lake by the Ministry of Natural Resources and Forestry. The MNRF facilitated the process by collecting the males and females for it to process. Walleye spawn in the early spring when water temperatures are between 5C and 11C.
The eggs were manually harvested from the females and quickly mixed with the melt from the male walleye. Volunteers constantly stir the mixture to ensure the reproduction phase initiates. As the eggs are fertilized they swell and constant oxygenation is required. Fertilization takes anywhere from 90 seconds to three minutes. There is an 80 per cent survival rate for the fry released into Lake Nipissing. The association has carried on the restocking tradition which was initiated more than 30 years ago.
