Annual Trout Fry Stocking Program Completed for the Western Lakes

The Inland Fisheries Service recently completed its annual stocking program of wild stock brown and rainbow trout fry in selected waters within the Western Lakes Wilderness Fishery. For several of these waters, the small fish need to be carried on foot by Service staff for the last leg of the journey.

The Western Lakes fishery is essentially maintained as a wild brown trout fishery with rainbow trout present in some waters. Only a number of waters in the more popular Nineteen Lagoons area undergo a limited stocking program of wild stock brown and rainbow trout fry hatched at the Inland Fisheries hatchery as well as adult transfers of wild fish from Great Lake.

Generally these stockings only occur where natural recruitment is not possible, in circumstances where consistent declines in trout populations are evident, and only ever with wild fish stock. The stocking program for each of these selected waters is set out in the Tasmanian Inland Recreational Fishery Management Plan 2008-18.

This year, Lake Botsford, Carters Lakes, Lake Chipman, Emma Tarns and Third Lagoon received between 500 and 1,500 brown trout fry each. In addition, Lake Chipman received 2,500 rainbow trout fry and Little Blue Lagoon, which is maintained as a pure rainbow trout fishery, received 3,000 rainbow trout fry.  

Carters Lakes, Lake Botsford and Lake Chipman are generally stocked on an annual basis. The aim is to mimic a more natural style of recruitment by providing a consistent influx of juvenile fish into the population. Emma Tarns generally receives a thousand brown trout fry most years and Third Lagoon every two years. Little Blue Lagoon is normally stocked with a few thousand wild stock rainbow trout fry every year or two.