By Darren Lum

Published May 9 2017

Standing with several volunteers under a cloudy sky on the shore of Halls Lake the Haliburton Highlands Outdoors Association (HHOA) manager Randy Charter watched with pride as the boat with Ministry of Natural Resources and Forestry (MNRF) representatives ferried out 1000 Haliburton Gold lake trout to deeper water.

Charter helped lead volunteers which were comprised of members of the HHOA and the Halls and Hawks Lakes Property Owners Association in an out of the ordinary effort to help with restocking the lake on Thursday afternoon May 4 at Elvin Johnson Park located North of Carnarvon.
“We don’t normally supply Halls [Lake] with fish because the MNR has a good sustainable population. For us to have a surplus one year and be able to bring back fish to them is awesome. It’s giving back” he said.

He adds the HHOA has been the fortunate recipients of 26000 fish eggs from the lake over the past two years through the MNRF fish stocking program.
Charter has been with the HHOA for close to three years and a manager for more than a year.
In the wild the success rate – when a fish grows to six to eight inches long – is just one or two per 1000 eggs. At the hatchery this rate is close to 65 per cent at the hatchery he adds.
“Using those numbers Halls Lake just got back 20 years of natural reproduction” he said.