COEUR d'ALENE - Fishery managers collected 9.25 million eggs from spawning Lake Pend Oreille kokanee that returned to Granite Creek this winter.

"We got the target number of eggs without any trouble this year," Jim Fredericks, regional fisheries manager for the Idaho Department of Fish and Game, said Tuesday. "In fact, the crew completed the egg-take operation before Thanksgiving, and in the past they've often gone well into December."

The eggs are transported to Cabinet Gorge Hatchery in Clark Fork and placed in incubators for a few months. By June they are 2-inch fry and are ready for release. Most go into the lake and some go into Sullivan Springs, which merges with Granite Creek before flowing into the lake.

Fish and Game is targeting a total kokanee planting of 10 million fry next year. In recent years, Fish and Game has tried to stock close to 12 million, although that hasn't always happened because of a shortage of fish.

Though the number of eggs collected this year is down from past years, it wasn't because there weren't enough fish. The fish trap at Granite Creek was pulled from the stream while a lot of kokanee were still swimming upstream in late November, preventing a full count.

"But I'd have to believe it would have been close to 200,000 - easily," Fredericks said. "As far as fish that are now spawning and dying, it's fair to say that it's the most we've seen - in terms of hatchery and wild spawners - since at least the early 1990s."

Fishery managers are now going to shift some of the lake's stocking program to early-spawning kokanee, which spawn in September as opposed to November or December as nearly all of the current kokanee in Pend Oreille do.

Some early spawners were stocked in past years, but only small numbers. Those were planted when managers had limited numbers of late-spawning kokanee and needed something to put in the lake.

The primary advantage of early-spawning fish is logistics, as collecting eggs is much easier in September than December.

"And performance-wise they do well," Fredericks said. "In some cases they actually grow better than the late-spawning fish," though that might not turn out to be the case in Pend Oreille.

The early-spawning kokanee will come from an egg-take operation at Deadwood Reservoir, which is located northeast of Boise. From there, as many as two-and-a-half million fry will be available to stock Pend Oreille.

"In the past it was maybe a couple hundred thousand (early spawners) here and there," Fredericks said.

But don't look for Fish and Game to switch over the program completely to early spawners without determining how well they will perform in Pend Oreille first, he said.

As for the abundance of adult kokanee in the lake, it's yet to be determined.

Andy Dux, principal fisheries research biologist for Fish and Game, said surveys were completed in late August using hydroacoustics and netting. The lab work of determining the age of the fish collected in the surveys had to wait until after the field season ended.

"My crew is just getting going on that (lab) process," Dux said Tuesday.

The abundance estimate won't be available until after the first of the year, he said.

"However, from what we observed during the surveys along with visual observations at spawning areas over the past month, it appears that we have the strongest return of adults since at least the early 1990s," Dux said.