South Dakota Game, Fish and Parks recently completed their annual salmon spawning operations on Lake Oahe.
GFP fisheries biologist Bob Hanten said 477 Chinook Salmon returned to Whitlock Spawning Station and crews collected 900,000 eggs.
Hanten says this year, they yielded more eggs per female than they would have on a normal year and saw larger fish. However, the number of fish that returned was lower. Each year, juvenile Chinook salmon are stocked into Lake Oahe. They then disperse throughout the reservoir until they become sexually mature. He says the water flowing down the fish ladder attracts mature salmon to the station where GFP staff collect, sort and spawn the fish. The salmon hatch and grow, spending about seven months in the hatchery before they are stocked back into the lake.
Chinook salmon do not naturally reproduce in Lake Oahe, Hanten says, and wouldn’t exist there without the efforts of GFP staff collecting eggs, rearing and stocking them back into the lake for anglers to enjoy. He says to make up for the collection of eggs for next year, they are working with the North Dakota Game and Fish Department to obtain approximately 400,000 salmon eggs.
State agencies frequently partner together to help obtain egg take goals and meet other spawning objectives. These partnerships are crucial to meeting management objectives and continuing to provide high quality fisheries for anglers to enjoy.
South Dakota currently has 1.3 million Chinook eggs in the hatcheries across the state. The eggs available should be enough to stock approximately 400,000 juvenile salmon in Lake Oahe in 2021.
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