Read a Minnesota fish stocking report before choosing a lake

In this guide

1. Try the 2024 Hennepin County report
2. Read across one row before comparing lakes
3. What would change your trip plan?

Start with the release date and life stage. A count of stocked fish describes what entered a water. Their size at release and the time since stocking determine what questions to ask next.

Try the 2024 Hennepin County report

Open full-size graphic · Minnesota DNR stocking report

Open the DNR report for Hennepin County walleye in 2024. To reproduce it in LakeFinder, select stocking year 2024, county Hennepin and species Walleye. Two entries illustrate the difference:

• Heritage Hills Pond, lake ID 27106900. The report records 12,000 fry. These were newly hatched fish. This entry gives no count of adult walleye present today.
• Minnetonka, lake ID 27013300. One row records 25,200 fingerlings weighing 2,100 pounds in total. Footnote 1 identifies fish purchased and stocked by private citizens or sporting groups. Other rows for Minnetonka follow; this one batch is not the lake’s annual total.

Read across one row before comparing lakes

1. Match the lake ID as well as the name. Write down the species, year and whether the fish were fry, fingerlings or yearlings.
2. Keep number and weight in separate columns. The 2,100 pounds apply to the batch. A larger count of fry does not establish a larger future population than a smaller count of fingerlings.
3. Look for additional entries for the same lake and year. Read the footnotes before adding rows or attributing the entire stocking to the same organisation.

What would change your trip plan?

Open Minnesota LakeFinder, look up the same lake ID and open its available fisheries survey. Record the survey year, gear or sampling method and lengths of walleye sampled, where reported. A survey predating the release cannot describe that release’s later survival. Fish of the right size in a newer survey can inform a plan, but size alone cannot tell you which batch produced them.

Use the stocking record to choose a question, the survey to check the available evidence, and the access map and current rules to decide whether the trip suits you. Once on the water, your own session log answers a different question: how your effort and catches varied that day.