20250822 Trout Stocking Fun

The Silver Lake Association is actively addressing the invasive Alewife fish problem in Silver Lake.   Alewife are a bait fish that are a salt water species that breeds in fresh water.   In the past, someone likely dumped some Alewife bait fish into the lake after a day of fishing.

The Alewife found a reproduction bonanza in Silver Lake and after several years we had a huge population (millions) of Alewife.   A serious issue is that so many Alewife resulted in them depleting the native zooplankton (like Daphne) that eat green algae in the lake.   Without the zooplankton, the green algae proliferated and the normally clear, exceptional value lake water turned pea-soup green.

Alewife are a cold-water species similar to trout.  Our remedy has been to stock the lake annually with Brown Trout from a Pennsylvania hatchery which will feed on Alewife.  Over the last several years, our Brown trout have been doing a great job on reducing the Alewife population and the water clarity has improved greatly.  Last Summer we had Secchi disk visibility readings of better than 5.5 meters.