Community Corner

Club Restocking Lake Hopatcong

The Knee Deep Club helps state keep lake filled with sport fish.

The Knee Deep Club isn't resting after the Lake Hopatcong Commission honored it last week for attacking the lake's water chestnut problem.

Early next week the club will team up with the Hackettstown State Fish Hatchery to disperse 25,000 hybrid striped bass throughout the lake the club said at Thursday night's meeting at the Civic Center.

Club Director Tim Clancy said keeping the lake stocked is essential to local business.

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"It helps the economy a lot," he said. "It gives [businesses] a longer season. Gets a lot more people coming up here, going to the restaurants and the marinas."

The club plans to send eight to 10 members on a handful of privately owned boats to release the bass. In past years the state would stock the lake, but the club volunteered its services due to job cuts at the hatchery.

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"The state is going through budgetary cuts," Club Director Lou Marcucci said. "Hackettstown is down several employees. They don't have to have staff dispersing the fish. The staff can be doing other tasks. We're just doing what we can to help them out."

"They don't have enough staff. Or their staff would get out and just spread it along the shoreline" where there's less chance the fish would survive, due to predation, Marcucci added.

The dispersal will happen either Tuesday or Wednesday morning, Marcucci said. Clancy said dispersing the fish in the late summer is important. The bass have grown to 4-6 inches each, which the hatchery considers large enough to survive on their own.

And though 25,000 fish sounds like a lot, it's not, according to Marcucci. The 36-year club member said only 1 or 2 percent of the fish would survive to maturity, which is considered 7 or 8 years old and nearly 10 pounds.

"Hopefully [the hybrid striped bass] will grow to a catchable size," Marcucci said.

The club plans to meet at Dow's Boat Rental in Mount Arlington and continue to Lee's County Park, where the dispersion will begin.

"It's because of the sport fishing on the lake," Marcucci said. "The more fish you put in, the more people are going to be able to catch, if you're a fisherman you like catching fish. It's simple."

"[Lake Hopatcong] is one of the premier fishing destinations in the state. There's no other lake in the state that has the diversity of sport fish that we have."

Clancy agreed.

"This is the best fishing lake within a gas tank of travel," he said. "You can find other lakes that have one or two species of fish, but not like Lake Hopatcong."

Clancy said hybrid striped bass must be restocked every year since it can't reproduce. He called it one of the "most exciting sport fish" because of its tenacity.

Marcucci said Lake Hopatcong features seven sport fish—large and small mouthed bass, hybrid striped bass, walleye, pickerel, channel catfish and trout.


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