PAINT BANK STATE FISH HATCHERY
October 20, 2008

During an October outing, we stopped at the Fish Hatchery for a look.

This building is the "Nursery" where baby fish are kept indoors until they are older. We arrived as they were gathering the little fish and moving them to a tank for transportation to streams and ponds.

One of the workers stepped out of the building with a net full of tiny fish and handed them to the guy on the truck.

The fish were loaded into one of four side-by-side tanks on the truck.

A look inside the nursery. They were just finishing emptying this side of the tank as you can tell by the closeness of the two gates above.

As fish are removed, the guy in the back moves a gate forward to coral the fish into a smaller and smaller section, enabling them to scoop them up in the net.

Here comes another load of little fish heading to the truck tanks.

Look at all those babies! They were squirming and jumping all over. It was neat to see them. Don't the ones in the bottom of the net get crushed??

Into the tank they go. When finished, the building was closed up and the truck pulled away. I was so glad that we got there just in time to see this.

You can see my videos of the above at You Tube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ezpMmelVamU 

The outside tanks where the larger fish are held.

Me at the Hatchery.

John taking a picture of the fish in one of the tanks.

Here's some of the big guys. They are pretty calm and just lazily keep swimming back and forth when you approach the side of the tank to see them.

These are Rainbow Trout. Their fins are such pretty colors. You can see them better by enlarging pic

The smaller fish. They go into a frenzy running and jumping every which way trying to get away from the stranger who approaches the side of their tank! They will swim down the the far end of the tank to get away from you as shown here.

Videos taken at the hatchery outside are at this link on You Tube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O3YV4-gYhBU

I spotted this fascinating looking growth at the end of one tank that was not being used and did not have any fresh water circulating to it. It's wild!

This is a close up of one section of the growth . It is forming on the bottom and growing up in columns to the top of the water. Here you see a few peaks that have broken through the top of the water. I love stuff like this!