[Dave B.]

I haven't pursued them yet myself but I have a couple of friends who have fairly regular success with them in Aeroflex.

As for the money aspect it doesn't cost NJ anything. We recieve them from Mass. in exchange for excess walleye fingerlings we have from normal culling procedures at the Hackettestown hatchery. Our truck runs the walleye up and returns with the LLS fingerlings.

Many state's F&W agencies participate in such exchange programs. I've been told that the turkeys we have in S. Jersey were the result of an exchange program with Arkansas.
Apparently when F&W transplanted some of the birds from our northern flocks to the southern areas they didn't do very well due to having been evolved to the types of forage normally found in the hard rock mountainous regions.
Around the same time Arkansas was trying to establish turkey pops in their hard rock hill regions using birds from their indigenous flocks which had evolved in their sand hill regions. Seems they were having similar difficulties due to the habitat differences.
So, as the story goes, we did an exchange with them trading some of our mountain birds for their sandy lowland region birds and both pops literally took off.

Anyway my apologies for getting off track, the LLS really only cost F&W the small amount of wages for the little time it takes to stock them in the 2 waterbodies, and perhaps a short period spent in an isolation tank at Hackettestown to ensure there are no pathogens present even though the contributing hatchery is regularly certified pathogen-free. I'm not really sure on this last bit, they may go directly to the 2 lakes.