La Cygne Lake, East City Lake at Pleasanton restocked with wiper fingerlings

Roger Sims, Journal Staff
3 days ago
2 min read

***Don George, a fisheries biologist for the state, lifts a net of wiper fingerlings at La Cygne Lake on Wednesday, Jun 17. (Photos by Roger Sims / Linn County Journal)***

By Roger Sims, Journal staff

Don George spent Wednesday, June 17, trying to beat the heat as he stocked three lakes in eastern Kansas with a little over 35,000 wipers. By the time he was delivering the fingerlings to La Cygne Lake, the sun had warmed air temperature into the lower 90s and he was worried that the fingerlings would be stressed.

George, a Mound City-based fisheries biologist for the Kansas Department of Wildlife and Parks (KDWP), said that the wiper fingerlings in a tank in the back of his pickup began their day at the Byron State Fish Hatchery about 10 miles south of the Kansas-Oklahoma state line before reaching their final destinations: Pomona Reservoir, La Cygne Lake and East Lake at Pleasanton.

On Wednesday, Pomona Reservoir was stocked with about 20,000 fingerlings, La Cygne Lake got 13,000, and the East City Lake got 2,200. Because of their small size, each distribution was based on weight.

***George holds up a net full of fingerlings destined to be put in the East City Lake of Pleasanton.***

At La Cygne Lake, he drove to the very northern tip of the lake just north of the Linn-Miami County border. He said the hatchlings would do better in cooler water, and the La Cygne Generating Station uses the lake to cool machines used to generate electrict.

Wipers are a hybrid fish which can’t breed naturally. However, once they reach their minimum size (18 inches minimum, limit catch two per day in most locations across the state), they are prized by sports fishers because they fight hard.

This photo of one fingerling on the lower right that attempted to cannabalize another shows their relative size. George said that in the absence of food, fingerlings will sometimes turn on each other. Neither fish survived this attempt.

George said the wipers he was stocking are a cross between a striped bass female and a white bass male. Because they are a hybrid, wipers require human intervention through the hatching process.

It take about four summers for the wipers to reach that 18 inch minimum creel size, George said. He said said that he takes orders for stocking about 10 months in advance.

For those who can’t wait for a crack at catching wipers, the KDWP forecast for wiper fishing early in 2026 had La Cygne Lake as fair, Pomona Reservoir was rated good and Clinton Reservoir was rated excellent. KDWP also reports that casting jigs or topwater plugs in spring and early summer are the most exciting way to catch wipers.