https://cpw.state.co.us/aboutus/Pages/News-Release-Details.aspx?NewsID=7748
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Colorado Parks and Wildlife's Josh Nehring, senior aquatic biologist for
the Southeast Region, displays a large walleye during the "March
Madness" walleye spawn at Lake Pueblo State Park.
Photo courtesy of Colorado Parks and Wildlife
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April 9, 2021
Lake Pueblo produces record walleye spawn a year after COVID-19
aborted CPW efforts
PUEBLO, Colo. – While college basketball fans sit glued to their
televisions each March, Colorado Parks and Wildlife plays its own version of
"March Madness."
Without fanfare, betting brackets or “One Shining Moment”
tributes, CPW biologists and volunteers head out at dawn, usually in freezing
temperatures, to Front Range reservoirs and spend a month capturing thousands
of walleye and spawning them in a quest for Colorado anglers’ precious aquatic
prize.
This March, CPW collected approximately 130 million eggs – a slam
dunk for anglers statewide.
It’s particularly great news after last year’s disappointing,
pandemic-shortened spawn produced only a tiny fraction of the usual haul.
“Honestly, it’s hard to believe what our team of aquatic
biologists, other CPW staff, and three volunteers were able to accomplish this
year at Lake Pueblo State Park,” said Josh Nehring, senior aquatic biologist
for CPW’s Southeast Region. “We weren’t sure what to expect. But we never
expected to catch so many fish and produce so many eggs, so fast.
“It’s remarkable. And anglers ought to be thrilled because it’s
going to mean great fishing in the coming years in Colorado.”
Most every spring, CPW holds its March Madness at three state
parks: Lake Pueblo, Cherry Creek and Chatfield.
There, three teams of aquatic biologists deploy at dawn each day
for most of the month, working seven days a week in sun, rain and often snow,
to gill-net hundreds of walleye each day.
They strip the popular gamefish, one slippery walleye after
another, of their milt and roe (sperm and eggs) as the fish wriggle furiously
in the biologists’ cold, wet hands.
The eggs are fertilized in a boathouse at Lake Pueblo, or on a
floating barge at Cherry Creek and Chatfield. Then the fertilized eggs – often
millions a day – are sent to CPW hatcheries where they are hatched and nurtured
until the fry and fingerlings are ready to be stocked in waters across
Colorado.
Typically the grueling routine is repeated daily until they’ve
produced about 120 million eggs. Only when the goal is reached can the madness
end.
Why does CPW go to all the effort?
Because anglers love walleye for the valiant fight they put up on
the end of a line and for the way they taste at the end of a fork.
The walleye eggs also are valuable as CPW’s hatchery staff trade
them to other states in exchange for desirable gamefish otherwise unavailable
in Colorado.
The annual effort has gone on since 1988 at Lake Pueblo and, in
normal years, involves a small army of CPW aquatic biologists, other staff and
volunteers who typically spend hours each day alongside the biologists
untangling dozens of nets – each longer than a football field – deployed each
afternoon and left overnight in the lakes for the next morning’s catch.
Then, a year ago, came COVID-19 forcing a sudden stop to the
spawning operation. One day into the 2020 walleye spawn, CPW aborted operations
as the worldwide pandemic reached Colorado.
Anglers feared their prized catch would quickly disappear without
the human-assisted spawning operation. Sure, the walleye in the three
lakes would still spawn without human interference. But the survival rate of
walleye eggs spawned naturally in the lake can be as low as 10 percent while
eggs gathered and fertilized by CPW aquatic biologists is typically as high as
80 percent.
"That’s why CPW and its predecessor agencies began spawning
fish several decades ago," Nehring said. "And the modern operation
has helped boost walleye populations and ensures great fishing for
anglers."
So there was great pressure on CPW’s Team Walleye as it began
operations this year. That pressure was made worse by the decision to limit
participation to just a core group of biologists and only three longtime
volunteers: Russ Dewey, Mark Elkins and Dan Frankowski.
Those three volunteers each have decades of experience –
Frankowski first volunteered at the Lake Pueblo boathouse in 1990 – and all
were vaccinated against the COVID-19 virus. And everyone wore masks for
protection. In a further safety precaution, the net reefing operation was moved
out of the cramped boathouse and into an open-air parking lot.
It was a stark contrast to past years when a large support staff
and larger team of volunteers arrived each morning before dawn to expedite the
spawn and to let the biologists concentrate on catching and squeezing the fish.
Perhaps the volunteers’ biggest contribution is the chore of
“reefing” the nets.
They drag 32 heavy tubs, each holding a 400-foot-long gill net,
and start hours of reefing -- the process of untangling the massive nets.
The work starts by taking one end of the long net and tossing it
over a large plastic pipe hanging from the rafters of the boathouse.
Then they stand and pull the 400-feet of net over the tube, inch
by inch, removing tree branches, debris and even old fishing lures, as they
slowly and carefully place it into a new tub. Along the way they also make
repairs to netting ripped by the debris.
This year, however, the 14-member Team Walleye was responsible for
most of the prep work, rinse stations, all the sorting and counting.
And with only three volunteers, the CPW Team Walleye biologists
spent what would normally be their lunch hours standing in the parking lot
reefing nets so they could take them back out on the lake to be set for the
next morning.
But as bad as 2020 was for Team Walleye, the 2021 season was
great. Nehring said the overall walleye catch at Lake Pueblo was among the best
in decades.
It took only a few days for the Pueblo team to blow past its goal
of 40 million eggs. The walleye, and the eggs, just kept piling up.
This turned out to be especially important because CPW had decided
in advance not to spawn at Chatfield this year and the effort at Cherry Creek
was partially held back due to COVID-19 concerns.
Carrie Tucker, aquatic biologist based in Pueblo, said she’d never
seen so many walleye.
“It was an absolutely monster year,” Tucker said. “We’ve never
gotten so many fish, day after day. It was great to be back on the water. And
it’s great to know our anglers are going to have a lot of success catching fish
this summer.”
The number of fish netted each day kept growing until Nehring,
Tucker and the team spawned 156 female walleyes on March 26. They were so
surprised they wrote the number on cardboard and placed it in the rafters of
the boathouse, noting it exceeded the previous record of 130 female walleye
spawned in one day in 2019.
In all, Team Walleye beat the 2019 record for daily female spawns
three times in 2021.
The box score showed that in a quick 16 days, they had produced 90
million eggs from Lake Pueblo -- by far the majority of CPW’s 2021
statewide total of 131 million eggs.
The team also ran up the score by exceeding 9 million eggs
produced on 3 days. Their best was 9.8 million March 29.
They further stuffed the stat sheet by producing 6 million sterile
"triploids." The triploid is a sterile walleye hybrid. CPW aquatic
biologists like triploids because they can be stocked in West Slope waters
without fear of reproducing and competing with native fish.
Another benefit of the record walleye spawn was the production of
32.4 million saugeye. It’s a hybrid made from sauger milt from Nebraska and
Colorado walleye eggs. The saugeye loves shallow water making it a favorite
among shore anglers.
In the college basketball March Madness, colorful confetti fell on
the winners as they cut down the nets at the end of the tournament.
Only a light snow fell on
Team Walleye as the biologists folded up the last nets on March 31, ending
CPW's version of March Madness.
For more photos use this link (Same one at top of page) https://cpw.state.co.us/aboutus/Pages/News-Release-Details.aspx?NewsID=7748
VIDEO:
Watch the process of the eggs
from the walleye spawn arriving at the Wray Hatchery to how we ship them out
the door as fry to be stocked in lakes and reservoirs across the state.
Here's the link: https://youtu.be/QVH-e9yEbQo
