A snow-filled winter resulted in rejuvenated area lakes this summer and fall, but not before serious winter kill damage occurred within the individual fisheries.

"At least a third of the lakes in the northwest had some sort of fish kill," said North Dakota Game and Fish Williston District fisheries supervisor Fred Ryckman. "I thought we would end up with worse kills than we had here."

The heavy snowfall radically reduced the amount of sunlight entering the area lakes, which seriously cut oxygen levels. When all of the white landscape melted, however, a bounty of runoff water was captured.

"Some of these lakes didn't have a lot of volume in them," Ryckman said of their status entering the winter. "In most places we feel we got several feet of water back."

The runoff also came without any serious issues. "We had quite a bit of runoff, we had some overflow, but we didn't have any major structural failure-type problems," he added of damage to dams.

The serious fish kill wasn't limited to just the northwest region of the state, as Ryckman said lakes suffered across the state. This means the department lost some resources to restock lakes, especially when it came to yellow perch.

He said when netting on Lake Sakakawea and the Missouri River, "we catch literally thousands of channel catfish in our nets. I'm the one who started to move some of those channel catfish to our (area) lakes."

Hauling the catfish from White Earth Bay and other locations gets to be fairly simple and easy while also being fairly inexpensive, Ryckman said. Placing the catfish in the area lakes also has become popular with anglers, he added.

The first thing Ryckman likes to do in assessing winter kill is to do some assessment netting.

"We did a lot of netting, and based upon that, we do the stocking," he said. "We did quite a bit more netting than we normally would have done. It was a pretty hectic spring for awhile."

Stocking northern pike and walleye fingerlings from the Garrison Dam National Fish Hatchery is a regular component of the department's program, he said. Trapping adult bluegill, crappie and perch and moving them to other lakes to hopefully establish a new year class also is an important stocking component.

He said restocking this year was more challenging because there were fewer adult fish to move around.

"There was a lot of demand and a number of the sources of fish weren't available any more," Ryckman said.

He said the most recent drought that lasted almost a decade produced lower and lower water levels in state lakes, creating terrible conditions for raising fish.

"So our fisheries have deteriorated in that time," Ryckman said.

While good water levels have returned, the fishery's natural reproduction doesn't return as fast as the water, he said.

"It takes two to three years before you'll see the affects of how good a year it was," Ryckman said.

The department also stocks catchable rainbow trout in winter kill lakes, which Ryckman said is a nice fish to deal with because they are basically very catchable.

"If you can stock something out there that people can catch immediately, that is a nice option for us," he said.

Ryckman also knows there are not a great number of diehard anglers who prefer rainbow trout, but it is a nice option for families who just want to go out and wet a line and catch something.

"For a lot of fisherman, that is what it is about," he said of going to an area lake just to enjoy being outside and catching something. "The other thing nice about rainbow trout is they are not competitive like a lot of other fish. They eat insects. They eat a lot of things that the other fish aren't doing and they aren't predators. They're not like a bullhead or something else."

He said the higher water levels on the area lakes are a godsend and things are looking to be in much better shape. But that positive runoff this spring also caused a 20-foot rise in Lake Sakakawea, which also helped area lakes.

"The district lakes are in pretty poor shape actually," he said. "If (Lake Sakakawea) wouldn't have come up and the poor district fishing, there would have been more disgruntled fishermen. Having (Sakakawea) come back up was really timely because it really took the pressure off the district lakes that really couldn't support much pressure this year."

Meanwhile, the outlook for the fall and winter is positive.

"The odds are we're looking at a 99 percent chance we're not going to have the kind of weather like we had last year," Ryckman said of another severe winter.

A stocking summary of area lakes this year is as follows:

Skjermo Lake, Divide County -- 4,000 pike fingerlings.

Baukol-Noonan Dam, Divide County -- 2,800 rainbow fingerlings, 5,600 walleye fingerlings.

Baukol-Noonan East Mine Pond, Divide County -- 350 rainbow fingerlings.

Watford City Park Pond, McKenzie County -- 350 rainbow fingerlings, 120 channel catfish fingerlings.

Arnegard Dam, McKenzie County -- 3,800 pike fingerlings.

Sather Dam, McKenzie County -- 700 rainbow fingerlings.

Stanley Pond, Mountrail County -- 800 rainbow fingerlings, 120 channel catfish fingerlings.

Stanley Reservoir, Mountrail County -- 18,000 pike fingerlings.

White Earth Dam, Mountrail County -- 13,000 pike fingerlings, 20,000 walleye fingerlings.

Cottonwood Lake, Williams County -- 25,700 pike fingerlings.

Blacktail Dam, Williams County -- 22,400 walleye fingerlings.

East Spring Lake Pond, Williams County -- 2,000 walleye fingerlings, 1,260 rainbow fingerlings.

Epping-Springbrook Dam, Williams County -- 13,000 pike fingerlings, 19,200 walleye fingerlings.

Iverson Dam, Williams County -- 700 rainbow fingerlings, 30 largemouth bass adults.

Kettle Lake, Williams County -- 700 rainbow fingerlings, 350 brown trout fingerlings.

Kota-Ray Dam, Williams County -- 2,400 rainbow fingerlings, 4,000 walleye fingerlings.

McGregor Dam, Williams County - 1,400 rainbow fingerlings, 9,600 walleye fingerlings.

McLeod (Ray) Reservoir, Williams County -- 6,400 walleye fingerlings.

Tioga Dam, Williams County -- 6,000 pike fingerlings.

West Spring Lake Pond, Williams County -- 315 rainbow fingerlings.