You will see a line like "43,687 redear sunfish stocked, 2010" on some of our lakes. It is a real number from the state, and it is worth knowing how to read it.
The year is half the fact
Forty thousand fingerlings released last spring and forty thousand released fifteen years ago are completely different news. The first is a class of small fish that will be catchable soon. The second is either an established population or nothing, depending on whether they reproduced.
That is why the year always sits beside the count, and why we keep every year we can find rather than only the latest.
Stocked does not mean common
A stocking is an attempt. Fish go into water that may or may not suit them, and survival runs from nearly total to nearly zero. The record proves somebody put fish in; it does not prove they are still there.
What it does tell you is intent: the agency thought this water could support that species, and usually they know the water.
Where it comes from
State agencies. In Florida the numbers arrive as PDF tables; other states publish map layers. Either way count and year travel together, and we match the water by name and nearest town, because state tables rarely use the federal identifiers.
Reading it with everything else
Fish stocked into a lake with good oxygen and real structure are a different prospect from the same number dropped into shallow water that goes hypoxic every August.
