It’s been 10 years since Nevada Department of Wildlife officials needed to stock rivers so early with fish.

It’s all because of the drought that stocking will start this month instead of the end of March.

“Mother Nature is not being very good to us this winter so we’re trying to look ahead,” Kim Tisdale, supervising fisheries biologist for the Nevada Department of Wildlife, told the Reno Gazette-Journal. “If we don’t, we’ll end up with a hatchery full of fish and no place to put them.”

The department will start with the Truckee River next week. Then it will stock Topaz, Spooner and Marlette lakes, as well as other smaller water bodies.

Tisdale told the RGJ that Lake Tahoe will likely receive more stocked trout than normal.

— Lake Tahoe News staff report