I arranged a tour of the hatchery operations at Wizard Falls Fish Hatchery for Central Oregon Flyfishers earlier this week. In my 8 years on the ODFW Restoration & Enhancement board I toured many hatcheries and this tour was the most interesting. They were in the middle of “propagating” fish and I saw something new to me. Like many, I have mixed feelings about hatcheries. Clearly, intermixing wild and hatchery fish is a bad thing. On the other hand, if we want to fish lakes where trout do not naturally occur then they must be stocked with hatchery fish. I know I enjoy fishing those lakes.

The tour began with fertilizing eggs and then placing some of them in a high pressure cylinder to make them “triploids” or sterile.

Eggs are then place in egg racks where they develop while fresh water continuously moves over them.

The next step was something I had not seen at any other hatchery and has been in use at Wizard Falls for less than a year. When the fish break out of their eggs, but part of the egg is still attached to their bellies which remain open, they are moved to a cylinder with water moving through it. Previously, the fish were moved into a trough where there was less water movement which could lead to the introduction of disease.

In the video above you can see how water is fed into the bottom of the cylinder and the fish are constantly circulated which reduces mortality. When the fish’s bellies close up they swim up and out of the cylinder and fall into the trough. The cylinder on the right is mostly empty of fish as they have already voluntarily swam out.

Of course, the final step is to move the fish to outdoor “raceways” when they are big enough.