A first of its kind partnership spearheaded by Mole Lake Band of Lake Superior Chippewa and area muskie clubs has led to the stocking of thousands of healthy, 11.5-inch muskie fingerlings into lakes across northern Wisconsin.

The Mole Lake Fisheries hatchery team, along with a coalition of four muskie clubs — Vilas and Oneida County Musky Fund, Headwaters Chapter of Muskies Inc., Boundary Waters Musky Club, and C and R Musky Club — joined forces to put together one of the largest private, non-DNR muskie stocking events in the history of the state. Thanks to their efforts, volunteers were able to place nearly 9,000 muskie fingerlings into waters of northern Wisconsin last month.

Jeff Van Remortel, founder of the Vilas and Oneida County Musky Fund and area fishing guide based in Hazelhurst, acted as the liaison between Mike Preul, director of Mole Lake Fishery, the muskie clubs, and Greg Matzke, a DNR biologist who was an integral part of the stocking efforts.

The project was funded by muskie clubs that were involved in the project and contributed funds toward raising the fingerlings, while Mole Lake covered its share of the cost of fish as well as the costs of raising them.

For the inaugural run of the project that took place in mid-October, Mole Lake raised a special Great Lakes spotted strain of muskies to stock in the Great Lakes drainage. Next year, the hatchery will raise an Upper Wisconsin River strain of muskies that will be stocked in the Wisconsin River drainage. This will continue to alternate between the two strains of genetically appropriate muskie to fill as much of the “unmet need” as possible in Vilas, Oneida, Forest, Florence, Lincoln, Langlade, Marinette, Oconto and Shawano counties.

Preul was excited to partner up and embark on this new project. He has raised walleye within the hatchery for 13 to 14 years, but the task of raising these muskies strains was new to him.

After discussions with different fishing advocates and noticeable funding issues over the last few years, it was decided there was definitely a need. In preparation of filling that need, Preul expanded Mole Lake’s indoor fishery last winter to be able to start the muskies this spring.

“The need has been there for a while,” Preul said. “We just didn’t have the capacity to raise muskies.”
The fingerlings were started indoors in mid-May using eggs harvested from Lake Michigan before moving to an outdoor rearing pond in mid-summer. They were ready for stocking into area lakes in mid-October.

Preul was pleasantly surprised with the 90% return on the spotted muskie fingerlings. Historically he has seen a 90-100% return on walleyes, but had concerns that muskies wouldn’t fare as well, especially in the first year. Muskies sit further up in the water column, making them more susceptible to bird predations, and they also eat each other. He took measures to keep the birds off, and also kept the muskies of a similar size together to avoid cannibalism.

“This far exceeded my expectations,” he said. “I thought closer to a 75% return. I guaranteed 6,000 fish, thought we’d get closer to 7,500, and we ended up with 9,000.”

Once the local lakes were stocked, the remaining unused fish were returned to the source in Green Bay.
Matzke was blown away by the quality of fish Mole Lake was able to raise. “They surpassed any expectation I could have had for this project, meaning the fish were bigger, in better health, and they produced more than I thought was possible.”

Stocking numbers down due to lack of funding

The stocking of muskie lakes has fallen as the DNR funding is stretched thin, which is impacting many area lakes. This coalition of groups has banded together to try to alleviate some of that strain on local fisheries.

“This is a very important project for our area,” Van Remortel said. “We have so many lakes in our immediate area that are already four to six years without any stocking, or maybe one stocking in the last eight years. There are still others that are larger systems that are being stocked at a fraction of what they need to be stocked at simply because of the lack of availability.”

Although he said DNR biologists locally are doing everything they can to stretch the fish budget to the best of their ability, things are at a tipping point for dozens of local lakes.

Matzke and Van Remortel agree that without stocking, a number of muskie populations would disappear, including well-known muskie fishing destinations that sustain the sport here.

“They are known as good fisheries and have been good fisheries because they’ve been stocked. When that diminishes greatly, or all together, things begin to slide. That is where we are now,” Van Remortel said.

From a DNR funding standpoint, Matzke explained that due to a long stretch with no increases to the state’s fishing license fee, paired with inflation costs, the fish management program’s dollars do not stretch as far as they used to.

“This means that we have to reduce spending, and one of the parts of fish management that requires a lot of funding is our propagation system,” Matzke said. “Because of this, the DNR has had to reduce the number of large fingerling muskies produced and stocked into area lakes.”

Since many of these lakes do not have natural reproduction, if stocking is halted, the fish will eventually age out of the system and that water will no longer contain muskies, Matzke said.

“That is the heart and soul of this project; to maintain as many muskie waters as possible on the landscape and have no negative impact to the DNR fisheries budget.”

One of the challenges of stocking northern lakes is something Matzke calls “native range” for muskies, meaning this is where muskie populations existed prior to the start of propagation, or stocking. Waters specific to northern Wisconsin require certain strains of muskies to be stocked, namely the Upper Wisconsin and Great Lakes spotted muskies, which are the focal point of this project.

“So to stock a muskie in northern Wisconsin, it has to be of the same genetic strain that is native to the area,” Matzke said. “Stocking of a different genetic strain has the potential to alter the genetic makeup of the muskie populations that have adapted to this area over time, and would not be a responsible management practice.”

While he says clubs have always been willing to help with the stocking issue, they have not had an avenue to privately purchase the needed genetic strains in order to stock in the native range.

That’s where this partnership comes into play, led by Mole Lake’s goal to enhance the state’s fisheries.

Local groups teaming up

Using a scoring system of local waters, DNR biologists have created a ranking system of waters they’d like to stock with muskies to maintain a fishery. This project basically picks up where DNR stocking efforts have left off.

The four muskie clubs involved helped fundraise to pay for the fingerlings, while DNR fisheries biologists consulted with Mole Lake staff to formulate a list of waters in need of fish; i.e. waters that are no longer being stocked by DNR, or that are being stocked at a lower rate than the fisheries would like. Covering a nine-county region, Matzke said this project is much-needed to protect the future of muskie fishing in a large geographic area.

“The Mole Lake team did an incredible job raising these extremely high-quality fish,” Van Remortel said.
Four lakes in Vilas and seven in Forest County received spotted muskie fingerlings measuring about 11.5 inches in length. Vilas stocking included Presque Isle, Van Vliet, Crab and Lynx lakes, totaling nearly 1,300 stocked muskies. In Forest County, lakes included Little Sand, Robert, Silver, Riley, Wabikon, Windfall and Trump. Once northern lakes were stocked with about 6,300 fish, the remaining 2,600 were stocked into the Oconto and Peshtigo rivers.

Although labor-intensive, Preul called raising the baby muskies a fun experience, and said he sees no reason why these stocking efforts wouldn’t continue for years to come and possibly grow as more groups get involved. For now, definite plans are in place to do it next year. His goal is to continue working toward bigger benefits to fishery resources in the area.

“It’s important to be involved with projects that benefit all users, tribal and non-tribal,” Preul said.
Van Remortel called the 2026 efforts a resounding success, and agreed they are already looking forward to 2027. He emphasized the importance of continuing the program, saying, “Outside of this project, there is no immediate or apparent solution coming. This project is crucial to meeting the needs of our muskie fisheries.”

Any club, individual or organization that would like to help fund these efforts or become involved in the project can contact Van Remortel at 920-639-6286 or visit wisconsinmuskystocking.com.