California Raises More Than 20 Million Trout Each Year : Fish Hatcheries Can’t Keep Up

Chris Boon was showing a reporter around the largest of California’s 14 trout hatcheries, at Fish Springs, in the Owens Valley, near Big Pine.

At the Fish Springs facility, 23 million gallons of water a day flow through six 1,000-yard-long concrete raceways for, depending on the time of year, a million trout in varying stages of growth.

Boon pointed to a few birds circling overhead.

“We’ve got year-around bird problems here,” Boon said.

“We think we lose something like 15% of our production to birds. Gulls and crows are the common predators, but great blue and black crown herons are the worst. We’ve tried everything--moving scarecrows, firecrackers set to timers, robots, carbide guns. Nothing works. “Now we’re looking at ways to enclose the entire raceway, by a chain link system or a fiberglass structure. It could cost $500,000.”

Half a million dollars for a domed hatchery. It’s a good thing Izaak Walton isn’t around to see this.

In round numbers, California’s hatchery operations account for 10% of the Department of Fish and Game’s budget. Utility bills alone at some hatcheries approach $1 million a year. The cost of raising 22 million to 23 million trout in the system works out to about 36 cents a fish, according to the DFG.

By contrast, a wild trout costs nothing. It’s free.

Why do the state’s hatcheries have to crank out 22 million to 23 million trout a year?

First of all, California has a lot of licensed fishermen. There were 2.45 million in 1984, the last year for which figures are available. And most of them, upon catching a trout, knock it on the head with the nearest blunt instrument. Result: California has a trout turnover problem. The fish have to be replaced, by the millions.

Is something out of whack here?

Phil Pister, a 30-year fisheries biologist for the DFG, thinks so. Among his other duties, Pister (pronounced PEES-ter) is supposed to inventory Eastern Sierra trout streams, looking for prospects to be included in the state’s wild trout program.

By law, the DFG is required to bring 25 miles of trout stream and one lake into California’s wild trout program each year. Fishing is allowed in those waters, but all trout must be released unharmed.

The problem is, the demand for production of hatchery trout, as opposed to stream-raised trout, is so heavy that Pister and other biologists have had their budgets drained of the relatively small sums of money needed to study wild trout stream candidates.

“There’s more to it than simply taking a quick look at a stream and saying, ‘OK, this one looks like it’ll probably support wild trout, let’s put this one in the program,’ ” Pister said.

“Some streams have the right blend of factors that would produce the right productivity of wild trout and some don’t. Despite what some fly fishermen think, all streams won’t support wild trout populations. Some streams just can’t make it.

“With some, it’s like trying to grow cows on a beach. More importantly, it takes time to learn which ones will and which won’t. We need seasonal aides to do things like make insect and vegetation inventories of streams.

“There are over one thousand waters in about 10 million acres of the Eastern Sierra, and two fulltime biologists to stay on top of them. It’s impossible. The fisheries staffing level at the Bishop office is the same as it was in 1946.”

Dick May, president of CalTrout, a San Francisco-based federation of wild trout-oriented fishermen, also said that the state’s wild trout programs are hamstrung by a lack of money.

“Budget cutbacks have eliminated a critical element in the formula, seasonal aides,” he said. “Seasonal aides are highly motivated, highly productive young people who do much of the field work for the DFG. Without them, things tend to slow down or come to a stop.

“We’re not at all opposed to hatcheries. In fact, we’d like to see the state build a research hatchery for the study of wild trout strains. And we’re not a fly fishing organization, either, like a lot of people think. To us, quality trout fishing means using fly fishing gear or spinning gear with a barbless, single-hook lure, or a fly-and-bubble rig.

“The key to the whole thing is funding, and we’ve pointed out to the people who run the DFG time and again that we’re unhappy with the level of staffing for its wild trout work.”

Last August, about half a million hatchery trout were stocked in just Crowley Lake, in the Eastern Sierra. About 20% of them were caught and killed April 26 and 27, the opening weekend of the trout fishing season.

Nearly everyone in the DFG would like to see the state’s trout fishermen begin recycling their trout. That isn’t likely to begin happening next week, however, and probably not before the 21st Century. But some see possible changing trends in the way Californians fish for trout.

Pister, for one, says there is no choice.

“As the number of trout fishermen increases over the years, there will simply have to be more catch-and-release fishing,” he said. “The hatchery system is working at capacity. I doubt if the state ever builds another trout hatchery. They’re expensive, for one thing. And a hatchery has to be built on top of a reliable water source, and there just aren’t any more available.”

Another DFG fisheries biologist, John Deinstadt, is in charge of the state’s wild trout program. He said that a stream must fit two criteria before it becomes a candidate for wild trout management.

“First, it has to be open to the public, not located on private property,” he said.

“Second, it must be productive enough to provide satisfactory angling in terms of the size of the fish in relation to anticipated fishing pressure. In other words, a lot of streams will support some wild trout, but will it produce enough of them to keep a lot of fishermen happy? We have to be certain that it will.”

Other Western states, with far smaller populations, have fewer criteria for wild trout waters. Virtually all of Montana’s streams, for example, are wild trout streams. State policy there forbids the stocking of hatchery trout in streams where any wild trout exist.

On the subject of streams that don’t pass muster, Deinstadt talked about one, Upper Rush Creek, which flows from Silver Lake to Grant Lake, in the June Lake Loop.

“A lot of fly fishermen have asked us about Upper Rush Creek, but we fin-marked a lot of fish there the past few years and the results weren’t good,” he said. “I can’t tell you why, but a wild trout population just wouldn’t do well there.”

For the record, the DFG is considering three Eastern Sierra streams as candidates for wild trout status: The South Fork of Bishop Creek, Mammoth Creek and some stretches of the Upper Owens River.

California has about 200 miles of streams and six lakes under wild trout program management, where trout limits vary from zero to two.