MORAVIA, Iowa – The late night, annual walleye collection will start this week at Rathbun Lake and the Iowa Great Lakes. Crews with the Iowa Department of Natural Resources Fisheries Bureau will set gillnets at night looking for walleyes ready to spawn.
Hatcheries will operate around the clock as local staff bring in the nightly haul well past midnight. The eggs are removed from the walleyes in the morning and the fish are returned to the lake where they were caught to make room for the next night’s catch.
All DNR offices, including fish hatcheries, are closed to the public until further notice due to COVID-19 precautions. Since you can’t come to the Rathbun or Spirit Lake fish hatcheries this year to see the walleyes collected, check out last year’s walleye collection efforts with the Iowa DNR Storm Lake Gillnetting 2019 video.