More than a quarter million fish took the plunge Thursday asDepartment of Wildlife, Fisheries and Parks officials began theprocess of restocking Lake Lincoln.

From a bridge on Lake Lincoln Road, authorities sent 263,517tiny bream and 25,000 small channel catfish into the 550-acre lakethat is slowly refilling after it was closed and drained for gatevalve repairs in October. Other fish, including bass and blackcrappie, will be added later.

“We’ll stage it out over a couple of months,” said DonaldCampbell, lake manager, about the stocking process.

Thursday’s fingerlings measured from less than one inch long toabout three inches. Campbell said DWF&P biologists wouldmonitor fish growth as the lake refills to a level that will allowfishing to resume.

“We’ll know more later, but right now we’re looking at twoyears,” Campbell.

Campbell was pleased with how quickly the lake is refilling.

“We’ve received about seven and a half inches of rain to get itup to this level, plus Ford’s Creek flows into it,” Campbell said.”It’s a lot quicker than I thought it would be.”

The fingerlings came in two 700-gallon tanks from DWF&P’shatchery in Meridian. The fish were hatched in March and April,said Charles Vaughn, conservation technician.

“These are what I call my babies,” Vaughn said as he opened thecatfish tank to show them to officials and visitors. “This timenext year, they’ll be big and plenty.”

For now, though, most of the fish are no bigger than the hookthat would be used to catch them.

“It’d take several of them to make a mess now, but they’llgrow,” said DWF&P employee Roy Long.

While the fish will grow and some will be able to be caughtsooner than others, Campbell said officials are still looking attwo years before fishing can resume.

“We want to get a lot of fish in there before we start puttingthe pressure on them,” Campbell said. “They will be fishedout.”