Kentucky had always had a healthy population of fishermen, but sport fishing license sales were beginning to stagnate. Angler numbers, which had increased for three generations, were peaking. The landscape also was becoming more urbanized. And for various reasons, urbanites did not fish as much as their rural cousins.
State fish and wildlife officials pored over these disturbing trends and uncovered a discomforting but perfectly understandable fact: One reason—maybe the main reason—that urbanites were not fishing was because they didn’t have a place close to home to fish.
To fill this need, fishery officials came up with the Fishing in Neighborhoods, or FINs, program. The idea is simple. They would target a few metro-area lakes and stock them with all the fish they could hold. The result, as they promoted relentlessly, would be “quality fishing close to home.”
If you provide the fish, they thought, the fishermen would come.
They were right.
“The Fishing in Neighborhoods program has been very successful,” said current FINs program director and urban fisheries biologist Dane Balsman. “A lot of people enjoy the program.”
Fishing in Neighborhoods began in 2006 with a handful of lakes in Jefferson and Fayette counties. This year, 43 watersheds in 28 counties from Hickman to Knox are involved.
The lakes naturally harbor some bass, catfish and panfish, but the Department of Fish and Wildlife Resources supplements that by heavily stocking them with rainbow trout, catfish and hybrid bluegill/green sunfish. All the lakes can be easily fished from the shore or dock, and most also allow canoes, kayaks and other small boat access.
The trout (118,300 rainbows are stocked statewide) provide a seasonal catch-and-keep fishery, as FINs lakes are warm-water ponds and small watersheds that won’t support trout year-round. Trout stockings ended in March and will resume in October at 20 lakes, including the seven in Jefferson County. The rest of the lakes will get trout in November, and trout stocking will continue through March.
Channel catfish are stocked in March, April, May and August. All lakes receive a hybrid sunfish stocking inearly June.
The 121,000 catfish and 30,000 hybrid sunfish that are stocked can survive and prosper during the sweltering Kentucky summer.
Some do. But the FINs program is designed to allow local anglers to catch, keep and enjoy fish, and that’s what most FINs anglers do.
If you go, expect company. Balsman said fishing pressure on many FINs lakes is “extremely high.”
How high?
A 2015 creel survey from Kentucky Lake recorded angler use at 17 man-hours per acre. Creel data from Jacobson Park Lake in Fayette County was 1,428 man-hours per acre. Kentucky Lake covers 160,000 acres in two states. Jacobson Park Lake floods about 46 acres in Lexington.
Provide the fish and fishermen will come.
FINs fishermen can keep five rainbow trout, four catfish, 15 sunfish and one largemouth bass (minimum length of 15 inches).
“The [FINs] regulations are a little more strict than the statewide regulations, so the fish will go a little farther,” explained Dave Dreves, a state game agency deputy commissioner who helps oversee the FINs program. “But the fish—the trout, catfish and hybrid sunfish—are stocked at a harvestable size. They are certainly there for the taking.”
The FINs waters are open to residents and nonresidents. A license is required for anglers age 16 and older.
Many of the FINs lakes are owned and/or managed by city or county municipalities, which share some of the costs of the cooperative program. Lake owners pay 25 percent of the stocking costs. Trout are supplied by the federal Wolf Creek National Fish Hatchery. The catfish and hybrid sunfish come from the state hatchery.
Kentucky is rife with prime fishing waters—miles of creeks, streams and rivers, along with more than a dozen federally managed major reservoirs. But for anglers in Anderson, Boone, Boyle, Campbell, Daviess, Fayette, Fleming, Franklin, Grant, Graves, Grayson, Harlan, Hickman, Hopkins, Jefferson, Jessamine, Kenton, Knox, Lincoln, Madison, Marshall, Mason, McCracken, Meade, Montgomery, Nelson, Scott and Warren counties, small, local, heavily stocked waters close to home are brimming with fish.
Go get yourself some.
For more information about the FINs program, including maps and stocking schedules, go to fw.ky.gov and click on the “fishing” tab, “recreational fishing” and then “Fishing in Neighborhoods.”
Readers may contact Gary Garth at outdoors@kentuckymonthly.com