MANITOULIN—The Manitoulin Island area will be included in the stocking of lake trout by the Ministry of Natural Resources (MNR) until 2020.
“They (Upper Great Lakes Management Unit of the MNR) brought forward the final draft official plan for the lake trout rehabilitation stocking plan, which will see stocking of lake trout in five sites on Lake Huron,” said Jim Sloss, a Manitoulin representative on the Fisheries Management Advisory Council Committee, after a meeting with representatives of the UGLMU last Saturday in Port Severn. “Two sites are located at the bottom of Georgian Bay, one in the Parry Sound area, Iroquois Bay and the fifth in the North Channel off Gore Bay. We will, in our area, (Gore Bay and Manitoulin) be getting close to 521,000 (520,938) fish being stocked.”
Mr. Sloss noted there will not be any lake trout stocked on the south side of Manitoulin Island or from the Bruce Peninsula to Sarnia, according to the plan, and Owen Sound has been left out of the stocking area presented.
“They didn’t make it clear as to how they are going to manage this stocking program, but we did as well as we had hoped (in terms of numbers of fish being stocked in this area),” said Mr. Sloss. A review of the plan will be carried out in five years time, but it is expected this amount of fish could be stocked every year until at least 2020.
The fish to be stocked in the North Channel will be planted in the Gore Bay area between Barrie Island and Little Current, such as the Darch Island area, the plan indicates.
“I understand the stocking won’t take place until 2017, which I was a bit concerned about,” said Mr. Sloss. “I was pleased that they included this number of fish for this area.”
