Every March, the Trail Lakes Hatchery crew looks forward to early signs of spring. March brings longer days, warmer weather, and the first direct sun of the year at the hatchery.
The Trail Lakes Hatchery is located just outside the town of Moose Pass and is surrounded by beautiful mountains, which happen to be great at blocking the sun for almost the entire winter. Even though the initial glimpse of sun is worthy of celebration, the real highlight of March is ponding season for the first emerging salmon fry of the year.
Moving juvenile salmon outside
During the summer and fall, we collect the eggs, fertilize them, and put them in incubators at the hatchery where they will remain until early spring.
Over the winter salmon hatch and bury themselves beneath artificial substrate until they absorb their yolk sacs. After the yolk sac is gone, salmon fry emerge out of the substrate to forage for food. When we determine that the fish have reached this stage of development, we begin the ponding process.
At Trail Lakes Hatchery, we don’t literally use ponds as some may envision. Ponding for us means moving juvenile salmon from incubators to large concrete raceways where they will reside until it’s time to release them into the wild.
Ponding: Step by step
When we decide that an incubator full of fry is ready to pond, we attach hose to the incubator's assigned raceway. This setup allows the fry to move out of the incubator voluntarily. This benefits juveniles that have not yet absorbed their yolk sac and can move when they're ready.
We periodically expose the fish to light to encourage them to swim out of the artificial substrate and down the hose to their new home.
After a few days, most of the fry have left their incubators and are now swimming in the much larger raceways. We use nets, siphons, and buckets to move the remaining fish that haven't left the incubators.
New season, new duties
Ponding creates new tasks and responsibilities for staff members. To name a few:
- Feeding the fry
- Tracking growth
- Monitoring raceway dissolved oxygen
- Measuring flows
Trail Lakes Hatchery participates in several release programs. This means the release destination and duration of stay at the hatchery varies. Some salmon will be moved in a matter of a couple months through fry release programs, while others will call the hatchery home for another year before we release them as smolt.
