OUTDOOR ADVENTURES

Where's the trout? Homeschoolers learn slimy lessons as they stock Potato Creek.

Families net slimy tales from biologist

Joseph Dits
South Bend Tribune

One net at a time, biologist Tom Bacula lowers a few rainbow trout from the back of his tanker truck to his young helpers — a group of homeschool kids — who then walk the fish to Potato Creek.

Kids linger a moment, enjoying the slimy flip-flopping in the net. Then turn it over. Pop. Splash. The trout sit in the newly clouded stream for a bit, then wiggle away.

Afterwards, a preschool-aged girl looks up to Bacula, who's seated on top of his emptied tank and poses, “Why did you put the fish in the water and not take them out?”

Later, as the families banter with him in a Q&A, one of the homeschool moms asks more specifically, “Why is it important to stock the fish?”

April Rollf and her kids, Jonah and Lily, carry a net with rainbow trout to help stock Potato Creek on April 28, 2022, at Potato Creek State Park in North Liberty.

Bacula, a fish management biologist for the Indiana Department of Natural Resources, explains that most of the state’s fish reproduce on their own because they have the right habitat for it. That isn’t the case for these trout, who will live only in the creek here at Potato Creek State Park in North Liberty. Trout need clean, cold-water streams, and they don’t do well here in August heat waves, he says.

“How long do the trout live?” one older girl asked.

“Most of the trout will live three weeks because anglers will catch and eat them,” Bacula replied, noting that the state’s stocking program supplies fish for people to catch.

The trout season for inland streams in Indiana, other than Lake Michigan tributaries, runs from the last Saturday of April through Dec. 31. But there isn’t a specific trout season for inland lakes. (fishing.IN.gov)

Bacula comes to stock Potato Creek each year on the Thursday before the stream trout season opens. On this day, Bacula guesses that he released about 200 fish, plus or minus 20, based on the overall weight of the creatures. He didn’t count.

“We want to handle them as little as possible,” he said, wanting to keep them healthy. “We want to get them in the water.”

All of these rainbow trout are more than seven inches long. Many are 10 inches and some as long as 13 inches, Bacula said.

They all started as fish eggs from a commercial hatchery in Washington state, shipped to Indiana via FedEx in December 2020. They were raised in the DNR’s hatcheries and moved to ponds to grow, feeding off of pellets half the size of a pea.

Indiana state biologist Tom Bacula answers homeschoolers' questions about fish April 28, 2022, after they stocked the stream at Potato Creek State Park in North Liberty.

Bacula covers northwest Indiana from his base at Kankakee Fish & Wildlife Area in North Judson. The homeschool families have been coming to watch, help and learn from Bacula’s trout-stocking day at Potato Creek for the past few years, an idea that mom Katie Miltenberger looked into after hearing about something similar elsewhere. Obviously, there’s room for only so many folks — and it goes pretty quickly — along the park’s paved bike trail.

“Last year, one fish didn’t make it,” she recalls. “So (Bacula) let all the kids hold it (if they wanted to) and explained the parts of the fish, and for kids who were really interested, he dissected it right there for the kids to see inside and he gave an anatomy lesson on the fly.”

After the homeschoolers leave, I spy warblers in the shrubs along this bend in the creek, including two yellow ones. ‘Tis also the season for bird migration.

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Indiana state biologist Tom Bacula hands a net with rainbow trout from his truck to Molly Emmons and her daughter, Raina Parkes, so they can help stock Potato Creek on April 28, 2022, at Potato Creek State Park in North Liberty.

Where’s the trout?

• Rainbow trout are among 16 fish species that Indiana stocks in public waters, from bluegill to Chinook salmon, catfish, hybrid sunfish and walleye. To look up where and how many fish Indiana is stocking this year or recently, link to a state website in this column online. That site also links to the state’s fishing regulation guide.

• Indiana’s DNR stocked nearly 22,000 trout in 16 streams across the state in time for the current season.

• The trout all come from the Curtis Creek Trout Rearing Station near Howe, Ind. Average size is roughly 11 inches.

A rainbow trout shows off its speckles just before it's scooped up and placed into Potato Creek on April 28, 2022, at Potato Creek State Park in North Liberty.

• To find a stocked stream, flip to the second page of the state’s stocking plan for rainbow trout at bit.ly/36XmSgi. In Elkhart County, the state planned to stock Cobus Creek, Solomon Creek, Little Elkhart River and Rowe-Eden Ditch. In LaPorte County, the plan includes Little Kankakee River and Slocum Ditch.

• Rainbow trout also are stocked in lakes, including South Bend’s Pinhook Lagoon.

• Elkhart County has 2.8 miles of stream that are open year-round for trout fishing only by catch and release and only by artificial lures or flies.

• DNR advises that trout will bite on artificial baits, but natural baits such as worms and bee moths tend to be the most popular.

Homeschool student Thomas Cocanower dumps rainbow trout into Potato Creek on April 28, 2022, at Potato Creek State Park in North Liberty.

• The bag limit for trout in inland waters is five per day at a minimum size of 7 inches. No more than one of these can be a brown trout.

March 2022:Indiana hikes hunting and fishing fees to shore up lagging wildlife conservation

• Anglers age 18 and older need an Indiana fishing license (plus a trout/salmon stamp if going for trout), which you can buy at on.IN.gov/INhuntfish. Younger anglers don’t need a license. You can also buy fishing and hunting licenses in person at state parks, including Potato Creek, and a few retailers — in St. Joseph County, they include Meijer and WalMart stores, Dick’s Sporting Goods, Kelley’s Bait & Tackle in Lakeville, Kabelin Ace Hardware in Walkerton and Michiana Archery Pro Shop in South Bend. Indiana residents can fish without a license this year on June 4-5 and Sept. 24.

Also in this column:It's warm enough. So eat pancakes by a mill and seek warblers, wildflowers

Follow Outdoor Adventures columnist Joseph Dits on Facebook at SBTOutdoorAdventures. Contact him at 574-235-6158 or jdits@sbtinfo.com.