Fishing for the future

Columbia Basin Fish Hatchery working to sustain county's fish populations

COLUMBIA BASIN — When Brian Lyon flings out food along the fish pond with a little green shovel, the waters ripple quickly.

The movement is the rainbow trout being cultivated at the Columbia Basin Fish Hatchery, rushing to the surface to grab a bite.

Lyon is one of four specialists at the hatchery, which was built in the early 1960s by the Grant County Public Utility District to sustain resident fish.

The hatchery primarily produces rainbow trout. Lyon said that it raises 1.5 million trout per year, the majority of which are planted in Grant County. The hatchery also raises tiger, eastern brook, brown and cutthroat trout, among others.

Several projects are unique to the facility.

In a program shared with another facility, the hatchery raises tiger musky, a sterile and predacious fish raised to control species in lakes that are undesirable. The only lake in Grant County that gets planted with tiger musky is Evergreen Reservoir, Lyon said.

Another, fairly new program is the raising of white sturgeon, to enhance the fish species' population in Lake Roosevelt.

"This program is pretty dear to our hearts because we're actually the first state facility that we're aware of that has taken this kind of program on, and we've been pretty successful at it," Lyon said. The program is entering its third year. "These are a threatened species in Lake Roosevelt on the brink of going extinct. There is no juvenile recruitment in Lake Roosevelt. What that means is that the adults are spawning, but the juveniles are not surviving."

There's no concrete reason for that, although theories are that other species are eating the sturgeon larvae, or pollution issues, which Lyon said is less of a big deal because it's being addressed and efforts are being made to clean up the river. The fluctuation of spawning area water levels and flows also contribute to the decreasing number.

The hatchery is raising the sturgeon from eggs to a size large enough that they will have a better chance at survival when planted in the river.

"It takes the sturgeon 30 to 40 years in the wild to become sexually mature so if, once the adults die off, there's no juvenile recruitment, then obviously the population will go away," Lyon said, stressing that the program is a partnership with Canada.

The hatchery receives the sturgeon as eggs and raises them for a year, planting them in the spring. One of the reason the hatchery was chosen to house the program is that it offers very good, very warm water, constantly at 58 degrees.

"We've found that with that water temperature, fish grow quite well." Lyon said.

All planted sturgeon are pit-tagged and scute-marked for identification purposes.

"They're kind of fun to raise; they're a little time-consuming at the beginning, but once we get them going, they seem to do quite well here," he said. "Everything you do with trout and salmon, you kind of throw it out the window because, with sturgeon, everything is different from day one."

Sturgeon must be trained to feed, whereas trout and salmon "kind of let you know when they're ready to feed," he said. "Sturgeon, you have to literally train them to eat or else they just don't get it."

Sturgeon are raised commercially in California for caviar; there is no fishing for the species in Lake Roosevelt. The only place to fish for them in the state is on the lower Columbia River, Lyon said. Tiger musky can be caught and kept if they are 3 feet long.

Right now, he said, the goal is to maintain the sturgeon population because they are in dire straits at the present.

The fish hatchery also boasts a fishing area designated for juveniles under 15 years old. Adults may be with their kids at the area, located on a section of the creek that flows water through the hatchery, but the children are the only ones who can do the fishing. They are allowed to keep the first five fish they catch, Lyon said.

Lyon has been with the hatchery for five years. He was interested in something outdoors, and the more he got into the job, the more he liked it.

"It's pretty rewarding in the fact that we're raising something for recreation," he said. "We're stocking these lakes for people to fish. It's satisfying from that aspect, and plus, it's an outdoor job and you get to go do neat things."

Hatchery specialist Jim Trammell echoed Lyon's assertion, including the fact that fishery specialists will backpack fish into different lakes which are without road access. They put the tiny fish into a collapsible plastic water jug, pump it up with air and put the jug in a backpack, Lyon explained.

"These little fish that we put in some lakes are only 3 inches long, and by the next season, they'll be 14 inches long, so they grow really well in some of these lakes, depending on the food sources in them."

Trammell has been with the hatchery for six years.

"To help maintain a fishery out there for people, and the benefits that it has for the community — it brings in millions of dollars for the community," he said.

The money comes from tourists fishing in Grant County, one of the highest-fished counties in the state.

Those neat things include driving around to different lakes, seeing the country and putting fish into local net pin sites, where they are raised through the winter and released in the spring.

Fish are planted in 100 to 150 different lakes in the area, in Grant County and a few in Adams County.

Rainbow trout eggs come to the hatchery from three different brood-stock facilities, hatcheries from Goldendale, Spokane and the Els Spring Hatchery.

The hatchery has three different programs — the spring fry plant, the fall fry plant and the catchable program.

The fish hatchery is also site for many field trips, especially during the early summer.

"'Why does it smell so bad?'" Trammell, with a laugh, said is the question that children ask most. "They want to touch the fish. It depends on the age group, but we get a lot of smaller children, kindergarten to third and fourth grade. They want to touch the fish, feed the fish."

What's going to help the hatchery's programs like the sturgeon and musky programs succeed is public involvement, Lyon said, which lends more importance to those field trips.

"The more people that know about that, the better off that program is going to be in the future," he said.

Trammell agreed.

"It's important that we maintain fishing opportunities out there in these lakes, to support recreation," he said. "People love to go fishing and camping."

"Without this facility in Grant County, there would probably be no residential fishing in Grant County at all," Lyon said. "This hatchery is hugely important to the community, if you're a fisherman. Or even if you're not. The tourism industry (makes) a ton of money off of (fishing)."