At the beginning of June, we released young fish into the Seurujoki river again. Among our obligations under our environmental permit, fish stocking is an annual project for our environmental department, which local residents have participated in since 2007.

This year, we released 3,580 young river trout and 6,200 young grayling into the Seurujoki river. Once a new discharge pipeline is completed, we will release 7,000 young trout into Loukinen as well.

We buy the fish to be released into the wild from the Natural Resources Institute Finland (Luke), and this time the fish were delivered to Kiistala in two transportation containers by fish-farmer Asko Virkkunen, based in Taivalkoski.

The stocking process was carried out by environment specialist Juho Väyrynen and Lilja Ojala, who studies environmental engineering. The two were assisted by Matti Piekkari from Kiistala, and Mauri Toivola from Lintula, both of whom are enthusiastic fishermen.

Mauri explained that the Seurujoki river has an abundant stock of good-sized trout, currently subject to fishing only by local residents and summer visitors. He added, “We could accommodate more fishing here.”

The fish were weighed carefully to guarantee stocking each of the four release locations with the intended number of young fish. After weighing, oxygen was added to the bags, to make sure that the fish survived the journey.

See photos of the fish stocking on our Facebook page!