“March 22 release date for Release of Coho at Algoma” from the March 14, 1968 Door County Advocate
March 22 release date for Release of Coho at Algoma
Preliminary plans for coho salmon stocking in Lake Michigan will get underway March 22 when two fish hauling trucks from the Bayfield Fish Hatchery in Northern Wisconsin bring 25,000 coho salmon yearlings to a staging site at Algoma.
Delivery of these salmon to Algoma will be the first step in an initial planting of coho salmon by Wisconsin into Lake Michigan. Although not the large scale stocking of coho salmon that Michigan has made, this experimental plant will provide fishing and enable the department to determine the suitability of Wisconsin streams to a coho salmon program.
The city of Algoma has provided a pond area adjacent to the Ahnapee River. The 25,000 coho salmon will be kept in this pond long enough to orient them to return to the Ahnapee River. The salmon may be kept in the pond for as little as three days or as long as three weeks, depending upon the urge of the salmon to seek out larger waters.
When finally released, these coho salmon will measure five to six inches and weigh approximately one to two ounces apiece.
Based on experience by the state of Michigan, some of these salmon will return as early as the fall of 1968. Early return salmon are called “Jack” salmon and weigh six to eight pounds. The majority or well over 90% will return to the vicinity of Algoma and the Ahnapee River by late summer and early fall of 1969, when they will weigh between 12 and 18 pounds with some weighing as much as 26 pounds.
This fast growth rate of a pound a month is due to the high abundance of alewife in Lake Michigan, alewife are almost the exclusive food of the coho salmon in Lake Michigan.
Courtesy of the Door County Library Newspaper Archive
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