WES SMALLING Star-Tribune staff writer | Posted: Thursday, November 15, 2007 12:00 am
Bigger fish and more of 'em.
That's what anglers want. And that's what they'll be getting in the coming years.
The Wyoming Game and Fish Department has begun a $10.4 million overhaul of the Dan Speas Rearing Station outside Casper, and already completed $3.3 million in upgrades at the Wigwam Rearing Station near Ten Sleep and the Dubois Fish Hatchery, among other improvements at its 10 hatcheries and rearing stations around the state. The Department hopes to secure funding for more multi-million-dollar improvements at the Story Hatchery in the Big Horns and the Boulder Hatchery of the Wind River region.
All the work is an effort to bring Wyoming's fish hatcheries up to date, to keep up with the latest technology available. The upgrades will mean more, bigger, and healthier fish for Wyoming's anglers to catch.
"We'll be meeting the needs of anglers of the state over the next 30 years," said Steve Sharon, fish cultures supervisor for the department, during a tour of the Speas Rearing Station last week.
Most of the funding for the projects was allocated by the Wyoming Legislature in 2004 and 2006.
Before the upgrades, some facilities dated back as far as 1910. The Speas Rearing Station was built in the late 1950s and its uncovered raceways, vulnerable water sources and filtration systems are behind the times.
Wyoming's hatchery system can keep up with the current demand of the state's anglers by cranking out about 4.1 million fish per year. But demand is increasing.
On the back lot of the Speas Rearing Station last week, bulldozers were perched around two gigantic craters they had dug for the huge buildings that will house dozens of new circular tanks. In a couple of years, each tank will contain tens of thousands of trout to be stocked in the state's waters.
"This place is going to be huge. When it's done it's going to be phenomenal," Sharon said, walking next to the hatchery's old fish tanks, a row of narrow, uncovered troughs.
"These linear units, they were a new technology in the 1960s," Sharon said.
The improvements at Speas are one of many efforts to bring Wyoming's hatcheries into the 21st century.
Speas is currently called a rearing station because it's not a true hatchery. Right now its fish are trucked in from other hatcheries as fingerlings, then raised to young adulthood. But sometime after construction is completed in 2009, Speas will be hatching its own trout from eggs. Then it will be able to increase its current output from about 100,000 pounds of fish per year to more than 300,000 pounds per year.
"This is the largest project we've ever undertaken in the hatchery system," Sharon said.
Most of Speas' fish will be rainbow trout. After hatching and growing up in tanks, they'll be released into reservoirs along the North Platte River, such as Alcova, Pathfinder and Glendo. Boysen Reservoir, the Laramie Plains Lakes and other large waters of the region will benefit too. Speas also will be able to raise cutthroat trout and other fish species.
The rearing station not having to depend on other hatcheries for fingerlings will have a rippling effect around the state.
"It'll free up other hatcheries to raise fish for other places," said assistant fish cultures supervisor Al Gettings.
The biggest changes at the Speas hatchery will be its new tanks and water treatment facilities.
Instead of raising fish in open, linear raceways like the ones in place now, the hatchery will have eight huge circular tanks and 36 small ones, all protected inside buildings with oxygen injectors and technologies that remove nitrogen from the water.
Other improvements include:
- securing the hatchery's main water supply and covering the Goose Egg Spring to protect it from whirling disease and other possible contaminants.
- adding a new pipeline to supply the hatchery with well water.
- building an effluent treatment system to filter fish waste and maintain water supplies to downstream irrigators.
- upgrading buildings.
- constructing a new residence for one additional employee.
While fish production will triple, water use won't. By treating and recirculating its water, the hatchery will reduce its water consumption by one-third.
Similar changes could be coming to the Story and Boulder hatcheries if the agency can secure funding from the state Legislature, Sharon said.
About 85 percent of the state's hatchery fish are stocked in lakes and reservoirs, and 15 percent are put in rivers and streams. Most are 5 to 9 inches long when they're stocked, but Speas will be able to stock more 7 to 9 inchers than it has in the past. Bigger fish are less likely to be eaten by walleye and other predators, so that should mean more big fish ending up in the creels and boat wells of anglers.
"Bottom line is we're going to be able to produce more and higher quality fish," Sharon said. "Down the road we'll be putting in larger fish in the waters of the state, places like Boysen Reservoir, the North Platte reservoirs, Flaming Gorge, and some large rainbows in Lake De Smet."