We’ve been curious but have never stopped until today.
The hatchery began rearing trout in 1966.
It hatches, rears and stocks about 200,000 trout and 3.1 million Kokanee salmon per year. The hatchery is a spawning and research center for the Kokanee salmon. They are fresh water salmon. Each fall they make a spawning run from Blue Mesa Reservoir up the East River into the hatchery where their eggs are harvested and hatched. Because it is early August there are no salmon here now. There are hundreds of thousands of rainbow trout though. Because of COVID-19, we didn’t get to tour the lab area.
The trout are held in “ the raceways .” These concrete tanks held thousands of fish of all sizes. A volunteer gave us a coffee can of fish food. We were to follow the “fish signs” to the raceways.
The first area held small fish, then medium and lastly the largest.
Those fish were hungry! It was so funny because they saw us coming and would follow us for the food!
There was one tank where the smallest fish would try to jump up a water bridge. They couldn’t make it but it was fun watching them try.
There were several public fishing ponds and people were taking advantage of the opportunity to catch a fish.
The ponds were next to the beautiful East River where fisher-people were fishing standing in the water.
It’s seemed like a good time to drive up to the Taylor Reservoir. The ride was beautiful and the Taylor River running along the highway was loaded with anglers.
The reservoir was pristine and full of recreational fun.
On the way back from the reservoir I’m overcome with the need to fish! Tom readied the line and we found the perfect spot.
We took turns with the pole until hunger over took us and we opted for lunch.
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