Fish and Wildlife delivers a cure for cabin fever

The pandemic, a long winter, and several inches of snow and ice turned cabin fever into an all-too-common malady.

Some time spent floating on a lake with a fishing rod in hand may cure that.

And anglers interested in catching rainbow trout won’t have to travel far. Technicians from the Kentucky Department of Fish & Wildlife Resources delivered 750 rainbows to Devou Park’s Prisoners Lake at the end of February.

The fish had been raised from fertilized eggs at the Wolf Creek National Fish Hatchery in Russell County, in a process that takes about 14 months. The hatchery produces about a million brown, brook, cutthroat, and rainbow trout every year. The fish are stocked into more than 100 different public fishing waters in collaboration with the Department of Fish and Wildlife.

It’s part of the Department’s Fishing in Neighborhoods program, started in 2006 to provide good opportunities to wet a line close to home. The program includes more than 40 lakes statewide that are regularly stocked with trout and catfish, the Department says.

The 3.8 acre Prisoners Lake was a stone quarry in the early 20th century where inmates from the city jail were put to work crushing stone. In the first few years of its operation, prisoners found the quarry a convenient place to escape, according to a Kenton County Library history. By 1924, the quarry was transformed into a lake.

Fishing there requires a state fishing license. If you intend to keep your catch, you need a state trout permit as well, Covington officials say. Those aged 15 or younger need neither.

The trout, a cold-water fish, should survive in Prisoners Lake until late May or early June, the Fish and Wildlife Department says. Or until they’re all caught.

 

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Read more articles by David Holthaus.

David Holthaus is the managing editor of NKY Thrives, an award-winning journalist, and a Cincinnati native. When not writing or editing, he's likely to be bicycling, hiking, reading or watching classic movies.