Fall 2026 Fish Release at Singing Bird Pond
Updated: 1 day ago
On a crisp morning in early October, FLOW board member Dave Marshall, a retired Water Quality Biologist for WDNR, backed his truck onto a primitive ramp at Singing Bird Pond, a backwater slough of the Wisconsin River. A few other board members—Timm Zumm, Darlene Stanek, and Emma Walker—piled out of another vehicle and gathered around the bed of Dave’s truck to get a glimpse of some tiny fish with a big story.
The aptly named starhead topminnow (a topminnow species that swims near the water’s surface and features a shiny star on its head) and lake chubsuckers play a key role in FLOW’s history—and, more importantly, the health of our riverway. Until recently, the distribution of the state endangered starhead topminnows and state special concern lake chubsuckers fish were only found below the Prairie du Sac dam. Within the past 15 years, the status of these and other fish species below the dam became threatened by nitrate pollution as the water quality in the once pristine oxbow lakes declined to the point where fish can no longer survive. In 2018, five WDNR retirees embarked on a project focused on what they called “an inconspicuous yet handsome and fascinating” fish.
That year, the crew (John Lyons, Dave Marshall, Sue Marcquenski, Tim Larson, and Jean Unmuth) collected wild starhead topminnows along the State Riverway to be raised in a small, landlocked pond. Their offspring were successfully reintroduced above the dam, where our intrepid DNR retiree-FLOW Science Committee members have been monitoring their health and reproduction.
This was the final year of the eight-year project. In addition to stocking more starhead topminnows and lake chubsuckers above the Prairie du Sac dam, Singing Bird Pond in the Town of Mazomanie was stocked for the first time. Unlike most oxbow lakes that became highly degraded across the State Riverway, Singing Bird Pond receives clean groundwater from Blackhawk Ridge.
The October stocking in Singing Bird Pond was the last one for the project. Dave’s truck contained 176 starhead topminnows, along with 101 lake chubsuckers. The fish spent a few minutes acclimating to the temperature of Singing Bird’s pristine waters before being released into the pond, where they made a break for the reeds at the edge of the water. Some will become lunch for a bluegill or largemouth bass; the population’s overall health will tell us a lot about the health of our waterway in the years to come.
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