By Brendan LaChance on April 5, 2021
A guide fishes on the North Platte River near Casper. (Dan Cepeda, Oil City File)
CASPER, Wyo. The Wyoming Game and Fish Department said on Monday, April 5 that with the arrival of spring, they are “amping up fish stocking throughout the state.”
In 2020, Game and Fish stocked about 7.1 million fish in Wyoming waters. Game and Fish Assistant Culture Supervisor Travis Trimble said the 2021 stocking plans are similar to last year’s efforts.
Most of the fish will be stocked into large reservoirs and other standing waters with Game and Fish planning to stock over 300 standing water bodies in the state this year.
(Cheyenne, WY)Â –Â Itâs spring in Wyoming and that means the Wyoming Game and Fish Department is amping up fish stocking throughout the state.Â
Over 1,500 Eagle Lake rainbow trout were stocked in 4 of Riverton’s Big Bend Ponds in March. So far, this is the only fish stocking that has happened in Fremont County this year.
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Travis Trimble, Game and Fish assistant fish culture supervisor, said this yearâs stocking plans are similar to 2020 when Game and Fish stocked 7.1 million fish in Wyoming waters.
About two-thirds of those 7.1 million fish were trout and kokanee salmon raised in Wyomingâs 10 fish hatcheries and rearing stations. The rest were cool and warm-water fish brought in from out of state. Some of those species include walleye, channel catfish, and crappie.
Kody Wagner, center, catches a Burbot as his friends Keaten Martin, right, and Jess Gutierrez Renteria assist him during the Ding-the-Ling Tournament on the Fontenelle Reservoir on Feb. 21. The annual weekend-long tournament is held as a way to help control the invasive fish species. âWhen you hear the bells that youâve got something, it just feels like Christmas morning,â Wagner said. KAYLA RENIE / NEWS&GUIDE PHOTOS
FONTENELLE RESERVOIR â At 6:22 a.m., one of the rod tips at the feet of four Farson friends started quivering.
âHey, hey, Kody, Kody, Kody,â Jess Gutierrez Renteria told his pal. âGot a bite, bud.â
Wildlife managers have documented chronic wasting disease in a new swath of the Green River basin.
The Wyoming Game and Fish Department sent out a news release Wednesday announcing a positive hit for the prion disease in a mule deer buck found dead in deer hunt area 138.
That 1,628-square-mile zone stretches from the headwaters of Boulder Creek at the Continental Divide, down to the sagebrush-steppe landscape that terminates at Fontenelle Reservoir.
The arrival of the incurable, lethal disease to the southwest slope of the Wind River Range is not a surprise. CWD was confirmed in deer hunt area 139, just to the north, in 2017, when the neurological disorder was discovered in a dead mule deer doe found at a property near the Pinedale Airport.