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In the depths of an Iowa winter some fishermen descend in their
own version of hibernation, seeding our lakes and streams to
only the hardiest of anglers. But inside an Iowa DNR hatchery,
a team of fishery experts is giving every Iowans a reason to
rediscover cold weather angling. On a crisp winter morning near
Manchester, DNR staff wade through a series of outdoor
raceways. Each concrete channel houses
hundreds of adult rainbow trout.
By mid-January, this batch of rainbows has reached a fertility
climax as the ripe females swim with bulging egg filled bellies.
The freshly plucked fish are shipped inside to build what DNR
staff call the backbone of Iowa's trout program.
Dave Marolf: What we do in a controlled environment here at
the fish hatchery is a great improvement on the survival that
we could expect in the same process that occurs naturally in
our streams. The females are temporarily
dipped into an anesthetic bath before staff firmly massage
their bellies into a steady stream of golden eggs.
Male trout are then utilized to fertilize those same eggs.
Dave Marolf: Once water is added to this mixture of *** and
eggs, fertilization occurs within seconds.
There are literally billions of *** cells in this mixture.
Fertilized eggs rest in trays for 30 days under a constant
flow of 52 degree water. Dave Marolf: That is called the
eyed eggs stage, when you can see the eye through the eggshell
you know you can handle the egg without damaging the developing
embryo. That's when we first look at
these eggs again. The process is repeated over and
over to create a staggering number of fish, more than
250,000 trout for Iowa's aquatic ecosystem.
Dave Marolf: We pick out any white, dead, organic matter.
These are some eggs that have died during the incubation
process. There's some eggs that were
never fertilized. But all of the white has to be
picked from these eggs. The fertilized eggs of January
2013 will be half pound trout in 2014.
At that stage, the DNR raised fish will be released into
nearly 50 northeast Iowa streams and increasingly into urban
lakes around our state. To witness the reach of Iowa
DNR's urban stocking program, just take a look at how far the
staff will travel. In this case, more than five
hours and hundreds of miles from the Big Spring Hatchery in
northeast Iowa to Council Bluffs on the Missouri River.
Wayne Wingert: We usually start loading early in the morning,
get them loaded on and then the fish fall really well.
As long as you can keep the temperature and the oxygen on
the fish then they'll haul a long time, stay on the truck and
look really healthy. After opening up a slice of big
lake in Council Bluffs, 1,000 rainbow trout are pumped
underneath the frozen surface. Bryan Hayes: The whole state of
Iowa is cold water at least six months out of the year so from
mid-October to mid-April we can bring trout into places like
Council Bluffs and create that fishing we're looking for.
Families of experienced and first-time fishermen have been
waiting all day for a chance to catch a fish found more often on
the other side of Iowa. Wayne Wingert: The truck was 48
degrees and we'll see what the lake is.
You don't want the temperature difference between the two to be
too drastic or it can be *** the fish.
Right at 40. According to the Iowa DNR, urban
stocking rose from just three ponds 25 years ago to 16
quarries, ponds and small lakes this winter, each one bringing
trout directly to the people of Iowa.
John Batt: It has taken pretty good hold as far as people
getting out and getting the trout stamp and using the
facility. I think the DNR officials have
said that it increased tremendously the first two
years. I think it quadrupled because
you didn't have the trout fishing on this part of the
state. Those first-time winter anglers
can use that annual trout fee to head to northeast Iowa in the
spring, summer or fall. In the meantime, thousands of
people who may never have fished or tasted trout are hooked for
years to come. Bryan Hayes: We love to see the
kids come out. We encourage parents to bring
the kids out, expose them to fishing.
Kids gravitate naturally to it. They have a ball.
The trout provide an easy fish to catch for kids and it's a big
part of the program.