Monthly Activity Narrative - US Fish and Wildlife ...
←
→
Page content transcription
If your browser does not render page correctly, please read the page content below
Monthly Activity Narrative
Hotchkiss National Fish Hatchery (HNFH)
February/March 2021
Mitigation/Recreational Fish Production:
Moving
nursery
fish to the
outside
raceways.
Above: Trying out our new fish pump
and fish counter. We found out that there is not enough water going into one nursery tank to keep
up with the pump. It moved the fish, but we had to continually stop and fill the fish tank up with
water in order for it to work. It will work great when moving fish from the upper outside raceways to the lower outside raceways. We still need to work out some bugs to get the counter to work. Above: Siphoning fry from egg jar and pouring them into a screen that separates the dead eggs allowing the live fry to slip in between the screen wire. The fish tank ends up with the fry and we dispose of the dead material left on the screen. Working with Partners At Hotchkiss National Fish Hatchery, every April the fish in hatchery raceways are full to the brim waiting to be stocked with ten-inch fish. The problem is that the ten reservoirs we stock in the spring are iced over preventing fish stocking, creating a bottleneck situation at the hatchery. One of our partners, National Park Service (Curecanti National Recreational Area) at the Blue Mesa Reservoir, Colorado, knows we have a problem in the spring. We contacted the Maintenance Worker to see if the ice was receding and let him know our dilemma. He informed us the ice wasn’t receding, but he volunteered to take the front end loader to one of the boat ramps to bust up the ice and clear it, so we could relieve the fish density situation at the hatchery, to stock fish in Blue Mesa Reservoir. We were able to stock 16,864 ten-inch rainbow trout for the American ice fisherman. This allowed us to lighten the hatchery raceway loads until ice diminishes on eight other reservoirs.
Below table shows fish currently on station at the end of March 2021.
Species Strain Number Weight Fish/lb. Size/in
RBT SSD-WSS-20 207,066 56,268 3.68 8.79
RBT ARD-ENN-20 440,104 4,969 88.57 3.04
RBT PRR-CRH-21 20,200 11.5 1755 1.13
BNT PRD-BNT-20 13,450 136 99 2.93
TOTAL Fish 680,820 61,384.5
RBT= Rainbow Trout: FLD= Fish Lake Domestic, SSD= Shasta Domestic, ARD=Arlee Domestic, HxH= Hofer x Harrison (Colorado Strain), BNT=
Brown Trout: PRD=Plymouth Rock Domestic. ENN- Ennis NFH, and WSS= White Sulphur Springs NFH.
Below table shows fish stocked during March 2021.
Species Strain Number Weight Fish/lb. Size/in
RBT SSD-WSS-20 16,864 4,960 3.4 9.06
RBT SSD-WSS-20 1,003 277 3.62 8.9
RBT SSD-WSS-20 4,058 1,121 3.62 8.9
TOTAL Fish 21,925 6,358
Fish Health:
• Brown trout mortalities went up over the weekend of Feb. 6-7. Thought due to change in
feed size and fish would not eat food. A smaller sizes hole tail screen was in place,
creating food to build up at the bottom of the tank. This was believed to create a
condition where food debris accumulating in the gills causing the fish to suffocate.
Monday, Feb 8, tail screen was replaced with bigger hole screen, tank cleaned, and fish
were given a salt bath treatment for an hour. By Wednesday the fish were back to
normal.
• Feb. 16- Hotchkiss NFH shipped three lots of fish to Bozeman Fish Health Center (BFHC),
two were live specimens and one euthanized for the annual fish inspection. Due to bad
weather nationally, this shipment didn’t get to BFHC until Feb. 24. The Brown Trout were
still alive but the rainbow were not usable.
• Feb. 24- Euthanized rainbow samples were re-shipped and received by BFHC for the
annual inspection on Feb. 27. The last fish sample lot was shipped March 8th.
• March 29- Both brown and the spring stockable rainbow trout passed the fish health
inspection report. We are waiting on one more lot of fall stocking rainbow trout
outcomes. Should be any day now.
Outreach
The hatchery was approached by Trent Hannafious Vice
President of the Montrose Trout Unlimited, to partner with the
Hotchkiss High School for a Trout in the Classroom project.
Trout Unlimited supplied the aquarium and chiller, Hotchkiss
NFH would supply the fish (~50 eggs). Project Leader Eaton
helped Trent and the Science Teacher, Michael Munoz (on the
left), set up the aquarium and chiller. Hotchkiss NFH received
trout eggs from Ennis NFH in December 8 and placed 100-
ARD strain rainbow trout in a net pen that was floated in the
aquarium. The eggs hatched two weeks after placing them in
the net (Dec. 22). Fry are now on feed and starting to put a
little size on them. The biology class will track trout
development and water chemistry.
Matchery Maintenance
• Quarters #4 –We are preparing this quarters to be
the shared quarters for our seasonal
employee/volunteer. The house is a three bedroom
and can house up to three individuals at one time.
Individuals will have their own bedroom and will share the commons areas like kitchen,
living room, bathroom, etc. We purchased beds for each room, a kitchen table and chairs,
a couch for the living room, and the hatchery manager donated two glider rocker chairs.
We are set for when our new seasonal employee comes here at the end of April.
• We prepared the distribution truck for fish spring stocking. We also picked up the
distribution truck from Jones Hole NFH to help deliver our fish this spring until June. In June
we will deliver their truck back and then help them with their fish spring stocking.
Hatchery Crew Personnel:
Current employees at Hotchkiss NFH are as follows:
Craig Eaton – Project Leader
Dominic Giordullo – Bio Science Tech
Katelynn Russell- Bio Science Tech
James Needham- Bio Science Tech
You can also read
