OCR Text |
Show '..!. ; -' - v i i , : : ;'''. t x . "t J : J -! - l - A' 1 !(" ' : '' 4 , ' ;V , . v.. y ... v , . . i i . --V ' -r. ,", I - 'N-.f-';. ' ' ' ,! .. '. i f - ' " " """"" ' ' " : ' :.. V. '- . . If if' P L .J : . . , I pi t r ' V- r .iv Karen Rohner, hatchery technician, assists Assistant Superintendent Dennis Southerland in sorting fish for next summer's fishing season. HATCH With the deer hunt barely over and winter snows already al-ready blanketing the the valleys, Division of Wildlife Resources personnel per-sonnel at the Mammoth Creek Fish Hatchery south of Hatch are busy grading fish according to size for next summer's fishing in Utah's lakes and streams. The tiny trout were all hatched last April at the hatchery. With a fish grader (sorter) borrowed bor-rowed from the state's Glenwood Hatchery, the tiny fish, which all appear to be about the same size, are being sorted into groups of small, medium and large sizes. The grader is adjusted to take off the larger fish first (approximately 46,000), the medium next (another 46,000) and the final 27,000, all small, will fall through last. Forty-six thousand of the tiny five-inchers, hatched last April, will grow to be 9-10-inch catchables in time for spring stocking. Mammoth Creek Hatchery Sorts Fish For Next Summers Season To run the fish through the machine, ma-chine, they are first netted and placed at the top of the grader, falling through according to size into the proper compartment where they swim through tubes into their winter raceway home. Now averaging five inches in length, the thousands of tiny trout will feed throughout the winter months in the hatchery's raceways, growing quickly to the 9"-10" size considered suitable by DWR biologists biolo-gists for spring planting. By spring, when stocking begins, be-gins, the 46,000 larger fish will have grown to average 10 inches, and they will be the first to be stocked. By the time of the second stocking a little later, the group of 46,000 mediums will have reached 10 inches, and the final group of 27,000 will follow when they reach the acceptable 9-10 inches. Any too small to qualify will be used to stock small mouth bass brood brood ponds in the southern Utah area. |