Minnesota’s walleye egg take on time, on target in 2024

St. Paul — Matt Ward knows the DNR’s Hinckley area fisheries office isn’t exactly running with the big dogs when it comes to walleye egg collection in April. “We’re not like the Cut Foot Sioux, collecting 200 quarts of eggs in a day,” he said of the operation near Lake Winnibigoshish.

But when it comes to stocking Minnesotans’ favorite fish, each location that collects eggs from female walleyes and milt from the males plays a role – especially in an era when “strain” often determines where tiny fish eventually will call home.

Ward, the area fisheries supervisor in Hinckley, said the “walleye stripping” operation on the Knife River – the water from which enters the St. Croix River and heads south – resulted in about 63 quarts of walleye eggs this spring in five days of collection.

For perspective, that’s less than 2% of the total of about 3,600 quarts collected statewide.

“It’s a small run but with local genetics,” Ward said. “We don’t have an official trap; we’re not quite there yet.”

That’s to be understood. It’s just the second year in the more modern era of genetics-focused walleye stocking that an egg take has been conducted on the Knife River.

Last spring, Ward said, fisheries personnel from Hinckley were on more of an “exploratory” mission to find a walleye-catching location. In some of the more well-established egg-take waters in Minnesota, prime areas where walleyes come to spawn long ago were identified. Some locations even have removable docks that span rivers or streams from which nets are set and adult walleye are retrieved.

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The Knife River walleyes are, genetically-speaking, of the Lower Mississippi strain. A year ago, eggs from that area of east-central Minnesota were part of a collection of similar-strain eggs from the Cannon River near Waterville – collected for the first time in several decades – and those from Lake Sarah in Murray County, where an egg take for LMS walleyes has been under way for several years. Hatched walleyes were designated to be stocked in systems where those fish are known to exist and thrive.

DNR Fisheries officials say stocking walleyes of a particular strain in waters where they exist leads to greater survival.

In fact, according to Paula Phelps, the DNR’s fish production supervisor, when strain-specific walleyes are stocked – and higher survival is documented – fewer walleye eggs are needed to reach agency goals.

This year, that goal was 3,462 quarts of eggs (an estimated 233.9 million eggs); a year ago it was nearly 3,900 quarts. As of Monday, the egg take goal had been exceeded by about 150 quarts.

The percentage rate of successful walleye egg hatch can vary greatly by location and conditions, Phelps said, and fry (the walleyes that hatch) are either stocked in state water systems, reared in state ponds for stocking in late summer, transferred to tribes, or sold to private aquaculture businesses.

Of the portion retained by the state DNR, about 30% are reserved for rearing to fingerling size (about the size of an adult’s finger, depending on fish growth rates and timing of stocking), while about 70% are stocked as fry.

(The DNR purchases about 40,000 pounds of fingerlings from private vendors in late summer, some of them likely the fry that were sold by the department in May.)

Fry are ready to depart one of the 11 hatchery locations in the state within about a month, Phelps said.

The first walleye-egg collection site – near Spicer – was operational April 9, according to Phelps. And, for the most part, operations at all state locations were completed in about a week. She said it was a mostly normal year – and somewhat unexpectedly so, given the extremely mild winter and early ice-outs in at least a large portion of the state.

“It was kind of like normal timing, even though I thought it would be earlier this year,” she said.

She commended the department’s collection crews, some of which help other locations reach walleye egg-take goals once their own have been reached. “They do a great job working together to reach goals,” she said.

Earlier this week, Phelps said egg-take operations remained under way in only two locations: the Dead River in the Fergus Falls area, and the Cut Foot Sioux operation near Grand Rapids.

As of Monday, the Cut Foot Sioux location had collected more than 900 quarts of walleye eggs (think, about 230 gallons of fish eggs). The Pine River operation (conducted by Brainerd fisheries personnel) was gathered some 590 quarts of eggs, and nearly 550 quarts were collected from Lake Sallie, by Detroit Lakes fisheries workers.

By strain: More than 1,922 (480 gallons) of Mississippi-strain walleye eggs has been collected as of Monday, followed by 685 quarts of Red River-strain, 427 quarts of Pike River-strain (Lake Vermilion area), and almost 300 quarts of Spicer-strain walleye eggs.

As for the Lower Mississippi strain walleye egg take, the Hinckley area’s 63 quarts were slightly fewer than the 84 quarts from the Waterville area; the Windom area take was about 135 quarts.