ANACONDA — For 115 years, a little hatchery in Anaconda has been supplying Montana’s waterways with one of its most precious resources: trout.
“We take care of them, day in and day out, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, so there’s a lot of time and care that goes into the product we produce,” said Fish Culture Specialist Kerrie Berger.
The product they produce is specifically westslope cutthroat and arctic grayling, two species of trout that are native to Montana waters. The hatchery located at Anaconda’s Washoe Park raises the fish from eggs until they’re old enough to be relocated to lakes and river tributaries across the state.
“And so to make sure that they are healthy, well fed, you know, have nice fins and look good, it takes a lot of care. There’s kind of an art to it, there’s an art and a science to it for sure,” said Washoe Park Trout Hatchery Manager Angela Smith.
Right now, I’m scooping out some year-old westslope cutthroat and these beauties are going up to Cooper’s Lake in the Blackfoot. They’re going to be sending out about 4,000 of these westslope cutthroat up to the lake, so if you end up catching one, you can thank me.
“We’ll be netting fish from inside and bringing them out to the truck; the truck has oxygen running all the time and aerators running all the time to give the fish everything they need to survive the trip,” Smith explained.
While they don’t stock trout in major rivers like the Big Hole, which is seeing a decline in trout numbers, they do stock tributaries of the Big Hole in the hopes it will help.
“Westslope cutthroat have been in Montana for millions of years and they don’t inhabit as much of their historical range as they used to, and so raising them here gives us the opportunity to expand them back into some of the historical range,” said Smith.
You must be proud of your fish, are they like your little pets?
“No pets, I’d say more like kids. Teenagers, yeah, they’re very moody, very sensitive, they don’t like us, really, so we do everything we can for them,” said Berger.
The hatchery produces about 250,000 fish a year and stocks 200 lakes in Montana.
