The Ohio Department of Natural Resources plans to stock Schoonover Lake with bluegill and largemouth bass fingerlings in the spring or summer of 2023.
J Swygart | The Lima News
LIMA — A spokesman for the Ohio Department of Natural Resources’ Division of Wildlife earlier this week said it will be four or five years before area anglers can expect to catch keeper-sized fish from Lima’s Schoonover Lake.
Mike Wilkerson, ODNR fish management supervisor, said the state plans to stock the lake with bluegill and largemouth bass fingerlings in the spring or summer of 2023, later than originally anticipated after the completion of a two-year, $2-million project to make upgrades to the lake’s dam and other improvements.
In preparation for the re-stocking of fish into the lake, employees from the city parks department are aggressively attacking the vegetation that has sprung up around the impoundment.
Kirk Niemeyer, who heads up the City of Lima’s Public Works Department, says the water level in the 20-acre lake is currently at about 95% of maximum capacity after being drained completely in June of 2019 to accommodate the infrastructure improvements.
It was a year ago when water began finding its way back to the dry lake bed, which Niemeyer described as “like a sponge.” When state wildlife officials early in 2021 gave the green light for the city to begin refilling Schoonover Lake, several options were considered. Those included pumping water from the nearby Ottawa River, but low river levels last summer — plus the cost to keep a pump running that was estimated to be nearly $20,000 — led the city to take a different route.
Using a nearby water hydrant, water from the city’s treatment plant was pumped into the Schoonover impoundment at a rate of about one-half inch per day. State natural resources officials had no issue with chemically-treated water being pumped into a habitat intended for aquatic life, Wilkerson said, and the plan was to let fall and spring rains and stormwater runoff complete the re-fill.
Seasonal rainfall, however, was less than anticipated. Wilkerson said delays in getting the lake filled led to the vegetation that sprouted in the lake bed during the renovation project, which in turn caused the state to delay re-stocking the lake.
“The vegetation as it is now would lead to oxygen depletion and the fish would die. Over the next year as the lake continues to fill the vegetation will die and break down,” Wilkerson said.
Niemeyer said city employees have worked aggressively to knock down much of the vegetation in the lake.
“They’ve been cutting around the edges of the lake and we even tried going on a jon boat with mechanical cutters, but that proved to be less than successful,” Niemeyer said. “Willow trees have been our biggest problem, but we’re going to continue to work to get the lake looking like it did prior to the construction.”
Wilkerson said bluegill fingerlings will be stocked in Schoonover Lake at a rate of 500 per acre, while largemouth bass will be placed in the lake at a 150-per-acre ratio.
“It will take a couple of years before the lake will be ready for fishing,” the ODNR official said. “A 12-inch largemouth bass — which is the state minimum for a legal catch — takes about three or four years to get that big from a fingerling.”
Rainbow trout, approximately 10 inches in length, will be placed in the lake next April as a put-and-take treat for anglers, meaning caught fish can be kept, as opposed to catch-and-release. The lake, at approximately eight feet deep, does not sustain a trout population.
Niemeyer said the city is working diligently to return Schoonover Lake to its status as the crown jewel of the city’s park system.
“We know what a treasure it is for any park to have a lake that big to recreate in and we want to make it nice,” he said.
