Taking advantage of put-and-take fishing

As a very young angler, I caught my first brook trout in Thunder Bay’s McVicar Creek. It would be romantic to say it was a wild fish, but it wasn’t. In those days, the early 1960s, the natural resources ministry stocked brook trout in nearly every creek, pond, and lake in the region, without much thought to how it might impact wild fish. So, a weir was built on McVicar, and several hundred pan-sized hatchery brook trout were dumped in the large pool. Anglers of all ages converged there and plucked those fish out in short order. That included yours truly, supervised by my father, Gord Sr. My early experience at McVicar may be why I have a soft spot for stocked brook trout, as long as they are not prioritized over native, wild trout. Thankfully, modern trout and salmonid management in Ontario is focused on preserving or restoring wild fish while creating put-and-take fisheries where none existed before. It’s an impressive program. Put-and-take stocking For the purposes of this column, we will focus on put-and-take stocked trout opportunities. In 2025, Ontario’s put-and-take stocking program is largely focused on brook trout, although splake (a cross between brook trout and lake trout) are also a large piece of the pie. In recent years—particularly in the north—the province’s stocking program has begun to get more creative, introducing browns and rainbows to the mix. History of fish stocking in Ontario Trout stocking goes back a long way in Ontario. A quick historical search turned up some amazing information. For instance, there is a document online called A History of Fish Stocking in Algonquin Provincial Park. It says stocking has continued from 1899 to the present. It notes that lake trout were first stocked in 1911, brook trout in 1918, and splake in 1954. A minimum of 10,300,000 fish have been stocked in Algonquin Park in over a century, and the peak number of fish stocked in a year was 905,000 in 1923. That’s 102 years ago! Mind-boggling numbers. If you really want to get into the weeds of Ontario’s history of stocking, there is a document accessible through Ontario Geohub. The map shows the history of fish stocking across the province in lakes, rivers, and reservoirs. There are 132,810 entries, and the detail is amazing. Google Ontario Fish Stocking History, and you will get there. At present, Ontario says it stocks 1,200 waterbodies