Hatcheries Help Satisfy Appetites of Area Anglers

A huge truck and trailer backs slowly down the boat-launching ramp at Lake Piru. A pipe in back spills the truck’s contents into the still water--much to the satisfaction of local anglers waiting nearby.

Through the pipe flow thousands of hungry, hatchery-raised fish. Even before workers finish emptying the truck’s contents, a smiling fisherman hauls in a six-inch rainbow trout.

That fish, transported to the lake by state Department of Fish and Game employees from the Fillmore Fish Hatchery, has met its destiny.

“It’s all part of the ‘put-and-take’ fishery,” said Jim Adams, director of the hatchery. “We put the fish in and the anglers take them out.”

This is a busy season for Adams and the seven other workers at the hatchery. For the next two months, they will spend much of their time transporting fish to lakes and streams from Lake Castaic to Atascadero, using specially equipped tanks loaded with thousands of fish.

“The rainy season is our busiest time,” Adams said. Fish raised during the summer and fall are released during winter and spring, when wet weather increases the amount of water to sustain them.

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The workers’ goal each year is to transplant close to 1 million young fish for the enjoyment of anglers throughout Southern California. It may not be nature’s way, but hatchery operators say the put-and-take system preserves wild stocks of fish by taking the brunt of pressure from anglers.

“From the conception of mankind, people have always wanted to do some fishing,” Adams said. “Natural stocks just couldn’t keep up. That’s why the Department of Fish and Game started helping out with hatcheries 100 years ago.”

Part of the $25 fishing-license fee that anglers pay helps fund the $3-million budget for the six hatcheries in Southern California.

Environmentalists, however, voice concern over California’s reliance on hatchery-raised fish.

“Sometimes people don’t see beyond the short-term benefits of catching more fish,” said Mark Capelli, executive director of Friends of the Ventura River. “It’s an artificial way of getting around the fact that many of these water bodies cannot sustain fish populations.”

Capelli said the hatchery fish, because of their weak and limited gene pools, are more susceptible to disease, which in turn can spread into native fish populations.

Most of the fish from hatcheries are caught within two weeks of being transported to their new homes, Adams said. About 10% die from the shock of dropping in to a new environment. A few elude anglers and even spawn if they find cool and clear running water.

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But in most cases, the fish wind up at the end of an angler’s hook.

The 52-year-old Fillmore trout hatchery is one of 11 in California. It is the primary source for hatchery trout in Ventura, Los Angeles, Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo counties.

All of the 900,000 fish that are stocked by the hatchery each year start their lives at a hatchery in Bishop, where fish eggs are fertilized and incubated before being shipped to Fillmore.

Within 30 days after fertilization, the eggs hatch into fish about as long as a finger is wide. For the next 10 or 11 months, hatchery personnel feed and nurture the fish in four 1,000-foot-long, concrete-lined pools. The water is kept moving to prevent stagnation and, every few feet, a pump bubbles oxygen into the tanks.

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To prevent the small fingerlings from being eaten by larger fish, the hatchery staff keep the small fish in separate pools.

At feeding time, the fish rise en masse , giving the surface the appearance of boiling water as they gorge themselves on food pellets made from the unused parts of processed fish.

After a year of pampering, the fish are ready to be taken to lakes and streams in mobile tanks equipped with oxygen pumps. The fish have grown to about six or seven inches in length and weigh about half a pound.

Anglers are usually ready when the fish arrive.

“We get them calling here asking when the next plant of hatchery fish is coming,” said Peter Cervantez, who works at the bait shop at Lake Piru. “Sometimes they’re lucky and time it just when the truck arrives.”