Fish Tales

SNEA members guarantee that anglers have trout to catch.

By Clyde Weiss

BOULDER CITY, NEVADA

It’s the E-ticket ride of their lives: Many hundreds of rainbow trout, raised in a hatchery for the past year, are "vacuumed" from their trough, sucked into a pump and propelled straight up a tube that dumps them into a truck.

As if all that isn’t enough for the critters, fish hatchery technician Tom Stern, a member of the State of Nevada Employees Association (SNEA)/ AFSCME Local 4041, then drives the 725 pounds of fish a short distance to the Colorado River. There, in the shadow of the majestic Hoover Dam, Stern opens a valve. The fish pour out through a flexible, 50-foot hose dangling over the edge of the roadway.

They free-fall the remaining 25 feet and hit the cold water with a splash, then gather by the river’s edge — seemingly regaining their wits — before venturing downstream. Stern watches them briefly, disconnects the hose and drives back to the Lake Mead Hatchery, one of four run by the Nevada Division of Wildlife.

His responsibility for these particular rainbows has ended. Anglers will now have a go at them.

Back at the hatchery, hundreds of thousands of eggs, fry (newly hatched) and juvenile trout await their turn to hatch, grow and be released into Lake Mead, Lake Mojave, the Colorado River and other locations throughout the state. Five people, including Stern, fellow hatchery technician Bill Ambridge (also a SNEA member) and man-ager Clyde Parke, work hard to make sure the fish survive long enough to get snagged on some fisherman’s hook.

Surviving that long is no easy task for these fish, despite the meticulous efforts of their human caretakers. Herons, snowy egrets and other voracious birds hungrily eye the goings-on from just outside the outdoor compound where some 50,000 maturing trout swim about in 16 narrow, concrete troughs.

The birds and other predators gobble up to 10 percent of the hatchery’s annual production of roughly 500,000 trout. Of those that make it all the way, about 100,000 are tossed into Lake Mead, created by construction of Hoover Dam and still the country’s largest man-made reservoir. Another 100,000 are dumped into Lake Mojave, a 67-mile stretch of the Colorado River that backs up to Davis Dam, another element in the Lake Mead National Recreation Area.

AFSCME members perform similar jobs — and more skilled ones, like fisheries scientist — in several other states.

One might ask: With such huge reservoirs and hundreds of miles of rivers, why is a trout hatchery even needed? Because, sadly, without the efforts of Stern, Ambridge and their associates, the trout wouldn’t even exist in those areas. "I’m not going to call the environment sterile," explains Stern, "but we don’t have enough nutrients in Lake Mead to maintain the proper growth of algae and everything else these fish feed on and hide in." After Glen Canyon Dam was built in 1963 (creating Lake Powell in Arizona), the necessary nutrients ceased to flow downstream, making Lake Mead inhospitable for trout.

In addition, a lack of streams and gravel beds makes it impossible for trout to spawn. And striped bass, the chief fish predator of the Colorado River system since their introduction into Lake Mead three decades ago, have made it impossible for trout to survive on their own. Hence the need for the Lake Mead Hatchery, whose $450,000 annual operating budget comes from fishing license fees and taxes on boat fuel, fishing gear and related items. ("Our whole program is funded, one way or another, by the sportsmen themselves," says Parke.)

ON A TOUR. In a large anteroom of the Lake Mead facility, thousands of eggs rest in incubator trays for five to seven days before hatching. In the same room, about 240,000 fry are kept in 20 troughs and hand-fed every hour.

Growing about an inch a month (depending on feed rate and water temperature), the trout eventually are moved outside into the concrete troughs to await transportation to their final destination — that is, if they don’t become bird food first.

It takes about 10 to 12 months for a trout to be processed through the hatchery. The crew stocks trout in Lake Mead from mid-November until mid-March. Water temperature is critical; if it’s too hot, the fish will die.

The trout are ready for "planting" when they’re about 12 inches long. At that length, they’re big enough to avoid the striped bass, which are so voracious that, if left to themselves, says Stern, "they’d clean everything out and wipe themselves out, too."

Stern, 47, has worked here more than 10 years — "longer than the rest of the crew combined." Before that, the California Division of Wildlife employed him. He has also worked at a private fish hatchery.

As Stern puts it, "I fish and hunt. That’s all I do, that’s what I live for. On my vacations, I go hunting, and I fish religiously out here." When he was a boy, his family vacationed regularly in the High Sierras, so he had fresh-caught fish for lunch, dinner, even breakfast.

As he grew up, the young man realized that he wanted to make amends for all the fish he had caught. Interviewing for a job at a state hatchery, he recalls, "I told them that I had taken so much in all these years of fishing that it’s now my turn to give something back."

He’s been giving back ever since. So has 40-year-old Bill Ambridge, who worked for the Alaska Department of Fish and Game for 14 years before coming to Nevada. He’s been at the Lake Mead Hatchery about five years, and continues to love it. "By doing our work," says Ambridge, "we’re giving the public an opportunity to fish for rainbow trout, that they otherwise wouldn’t have."

Not only do the two men work at the hatchery, they also live at it, in two houses and a mobile home provided by the state. That’s not to ease their daily commute from Las Vegas, about 25 miles away. Explains Stern: Because the frequent lightning storms sometimes knock out electrical power in the area, "Somebody’s got to be here at all times so we can turn on the valves" to restore water flow from Lake Mead.

"We have low-pressure alarms in the houses," Stern adds. "When the alarms go off, we run up here and do our thing. You’re thinking, ‘Oh, my God, let’s just hope we hit the switch and everything works.’ Without water, we have no fish."

COME ON DOWN. The hatchery is open daily to the public, and visitors can take self-guided tours. "Most people think all we do is put these fish in the water," says Stern, "and that’s it. But it’s a lot more technical than that."

It’s also a lot of fun for the guys who perform the work. Stern considers it "a dream job," and Ambridge agrees, declaring, "I’m enjoying it too much to move back to Alaska."

Despite their love for their work, neither man nowadays favors trout as a menu option. "You’re around them all the time," Stern observes. "I wouldn’t eat them out of the hatchery, anyway. I’d rather go catch little brookies or brown trout" — natural fish that develop a better taste after living a few days or weeks in the river. As for Ambridge, "I got spoiled up in Alaska, eating shrimp, halibut and salmon. Trout is just not that appealing to me after eating that state’s prime seafood." But he pronounces the Lake Mead striped bass "pretty good" — maybe because it’s been gobbling up all those trout.