Nanaimo’s Fishing for Fun group, a number of children and staff from Freshwater Fisheries Society of B.C. released trout at Colliery Dam Park on March 16.
“We had a preschool that contacted me and wanted to do a trout release, so we got a hold of our friends at Freshwater Fisheries Society of B.C. and we did a trout release with the little kids here,” said Mike Lawrence, Fishing for Fun founder and coordinator. “It’s a beautiful day, we brought them out and wanted to get them fishing and it’s a great way to start.”
For the society and Tony Andrychuk, assistant manager for Vancouver Island, the event is part of their provincial spring stocking program.
“We’re stocking 1,500 fish into the three Colliery lakes, so Colliery 1 today we’ve got 500 and the other two will each get 500,” said Andrychuk. “They’re all sterile rainbow trout, we stock sterile rainbow trout into a majority of the lakes on the Island … the reason why all our fish are sterile is that if there is a wild population, they won’t affect it.
“All these fish are ready to be caught, what they call the catchable rainbow trout, and putting them into these urban lakes gives easy access for locals to come up and fish.”
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