[Dave B.]

Thanks for the link 'Almaink', I appreciate it. Since I was unable to attend either the trout meeting at Hackettestown or the NJF&W council meeting I've been relying on private contact with the Div. to try to keep everyone as updated as possible.
If Pat H. did indeed make the statements attributed to her then you can bank on the accuracy on them. In addition to covering the upper Delaware watershed/N.W. Jersey territory she is, as many here know, in charge of the overall trout program in the state including the WTS program, although in recent years biologist Ross Shramko has taken on the duties of handling the vast majority of the stocking program.

So it would appear that 2 lakes have been removed from the '1-time' list. As for the Mercer Co. naturalists' purported stance of not wanting the possible introduction of the bacteria into the lake, apparently she's not that informed. The bacteria was there before the lake since the Assunpink has been stocked since at least the early '60s, which means it recieved thousand of those potential carrier fish from the old Hackettestown hatchery. As well it is still getting those potential carrier fish stocked immediately above the lake into the Assunpink at Edinburg.

Regarding the 'Bonus Broodstock Lakes' program, I've been purposely avoiding that subject since there have been no solid decisions made yet, except that there would be some sort of continuation of the program this year.

Regarding the author's comment on the number stocked last year versus the proposed number for this year in relation to Lisa's comment, the 614,000+ figure from last year is the actual total stocked. However the baseline proposed total was the same as this year at approx. 570,000. With very few exceptions the Pequest hatchery staff manage to produce 30-50K more fish each year than the baseline number, a real testament to the knowledge and skill of those folks.

Finally, thanks to Michael82929 as always for helping to keep us informed on the stocking program. Always useful and valuable info, this time he's tossed us a pretty intense teaser that I'm certain will be of interest to just about everyone.