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Indiana's King eggs have been collected and transported home to Mixsawbah, from Michigan. A big thanks to all involved.

Day 1 of Chinook Salmon egg take 2025 is complete. Today we spawned 323 pairs, harvesting 1,005 Chinooks. Biggest was 21.0 lbs. We passed 52 coho salmon (biggest 8.8 lbs) and 3 steelhead (biggest 10.4 lbs). Did not see any brown trout. We're planning to go again tomorrow, starting at 9am. Come and see the show! If the fish supply holds we might go again on Wednesday.

Day 2 of Chinook Salmon egg take 2025 is complete. We had another big day, spawning 293 pairs and harvesting a total of 651 Chinook Salmon, for a season total of 1,656. We had a big hen come in today-27.7 lbs. Check out the pics below. We only saw 35 coho salmon today, and they were culled for fish health exams performed by MSU. We passed two steelhead (for a season of 5), and three brown trout. The fish supply is good, so we're going to do it again tomorrow, starting at 9am. Yesterday's take was for the Platte River Hatchery allotment, and today's take was for the Wolf Lake Hatchery allotment. Tomorrow we'll take eggs for Thompson Hatchery.

Day 3 of Chinook Salmon egg take 2025 is complete. We had another big day, spawning 320 pairs and harvesting a total of 792 Chinooks, for a season total of 2,451. We filled the quota for Thompson Hatchery today, so we have all the eggs we need for Michigan hatcheries. Next week we are planning two final egg take days- Tuesday for Indiana's needs, and Wednesday for Illinois. If all goes well with those takes, we'll empty the ponds, and pull the weir as soon as we're done with the take on Wednesday. At that point any remaining fish will be able to swim upstream on their own.

We didn't see any big Kings today. A couple in the low 20's, but nothing to match the big hen from yesterday. We passed 24 steelhead, for a season total of 29. The biggest was 12.9 lbs. We passed 72 cohos today, for a season total of 124. The big coho today was 9.4 lbs, our biggest so far this year. We also passed 7 brown trout, for a season total of 10. One was a beauty hen lake run brown that weighed 11.8 lbs. We also had one male pink salmon show up today as well!

Finished another good day of Chinook salmon egg take, this time for Indiana. We spawned 161 pairs today, harvesting a total of 1,115 Chinooks for a season total of 3,566. We passed 160 coho salmon today, for a season total of 284. We also passed 28 steelhead, for a season total of 57. Eight brown trout came through as well, for a season total of 18. No season record sized fish came through today.

The plan is to go again tomorrow, starting around 9am. This take will be for Illinois. If all goes well, after the egg take we'll empty and drain the ponds. We'll also pull the weir grates, allowing any remaining fish to pass upstream on their own.

That's a wrap! We were able to finish Chinook Egg Take 2025 at the Little Manistee Weir today. We drained the facility and pulled the weir grates. Any remaining Chinooks will be able to go upstream to spawn, as will all the coho, steelhead, and brown trout.

We spawned 140 pairs today for Illinois DNR. We harvested a total of 1,582 Chinook salmon for a season total of 5,148. We passed 129 steelhead today for a season total of 186. No really big steelhead today, but we did pass several over 12 lbs (see the pic below for today's biggest). We passed 316 coho salmon today for a season total of 600. We passed a big male today that weighed 11.0 lbs, our biggest of the season. We also passed another 21 brown trout for a season total of 39. As a whole, the egg take went very well. Thanks to everyone who was able to stop in and see the show! I'll get a steelhead egg take thread going sometime in March.

Nice work. Thanks for your efforts in this and taking the time to report. 

All work was done by Michgan, I just copied there information to post. Thought it would be helpful. Seems that most are reporting a fall run that some consider late and others are saying it is just drawn out over time. So here we had all that warm water and fishing is slow and drawn out. To the north they had much better conditions then we had but still slow and drawn out. Size as noted in the collection was down for all species. Wisconsin also with reports that sounded the same. Size is down lake wide.
As soon as Indiana's eggs were collected, our hatchery mangers for Bodine and Mixsawbah took the trip north bringing home approx.800,000 kings eggs.

As winter approaches, Mixsawbah will be going thru the same process they have done for decades. If you ever thought about visiting them make the trip. Give them a call, they'll let you know when the best time to come out and see the young kings swimming around the inside tanks. There is alot of work that takes place every year by these guys to produce fish for our fishery. Who knows you might like it enough to come out and help as others have done. As the fish grow they have to be moved. That requires labor. Some on this site have given some of their time to help when they can. It has always been appreciated by Mixsawbah. 

Mixsawbah is only about 10 miles from us. I didn't know the public could interact! We will see about this eventually and report back. Appreciate all you do!