Record cold temperatures were reported in Des Moines and central Iowa Tuesday morning. This early arrival of winter has the Iowa Department of Natural Resources scrambling to stock some lakes with rainbow trout.
The DNR wants to give anglers a chance to reel in some fish on the open water before it's too late. Every fall the DNR stocks a few central Iowa lakes with these cold-water fish. This year, for the first time, they had to move up the stocking dates to beat the weather.
Biometrician Jeff Kopaska tells WHO-TV Channel 13 cold weather through the middle of this week leaves the possibility of these lakes actually freezing and creating dangerous thin ice. So they decided to rush and get 1,500 trout into Bondurant’s water and another 2,200 in Ames.
“We will have another event in January or February where we stock trout for ice fishing as well, so with this we have opportunities for people to fish with open water before it freezes and once that first ice comes there will still be plenty of trout in here until we put some more in later,” Kopaska told WHO-TV Channel 13..
Usually, trout stocking for Lake Petocka in Bondurant and Ada Hayden Heritage Park Lake in Ames takes place in mid-November.
(Photo: WHO-TV Channel 13)