According to Mike Green, NDOW fisheries biologist, "NDOW planted 9,000 wipers last summer plus another 10,500 this summer into the two reservoirs to help control the chub and suckers in both lakes and the perch in Wildhorse Reservoir."
Last summer, 6,000 wipers went into Wildhorse and 3,000 went into South Fork.
This year, due to low water conditions in Wildhorse, only 3,000 went there, while 7,500 ended up in South Fork.
They can get quite large and are a great fishing, as well as great eating, game fish.
The current state record is 17 pounds and was caught by Keith Bachman at Lahontan Reservoir in 2002, while the world record is a little over 27 pounds.
Last year's fish should be approaching eight inches in length and by next summer they should be approximately a foot in length,
Although there is plenty of forage for the wipers in both lakes, the short growing season will limit the growth of the fish and it will be a number of years a before we see fish approaching the 10-pound classification.
Because wipers are a hybrid, they are sterile, so if the experiment does not pan out, they would eventually be removed from the two reservoirs through natural attrition and fishing.
