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Trout get triple threat
Numbers could go down before state's biggest hatchery gets total overhaul; disease still watched
BY CHARLES GARRATT • STAFF WRITER
 | | The tail waters of the Jackson River below Lake Moomaw have not been stocked for 10 years. This small rainbow trout was netted last Friday by DGIF fisheries technician Jason Hallacher. Both rainbow and brown trout are reproducing in the river, but that may change depending on the impact didymo algae has upon the river bottom and creatures that live there. |
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WARM SPRINGS - The state's largest producer of catchable size trout is little more than a series of crumbling ditches dug in a field parallel to the Cowpasture River a half-century ago.
Coursey Springs Fish Cultural Station near Williamsville produces onethird of the trout stocked in all Virginia rivers and streams by the Department of Game and Inland Fisheries. All the fish at Coursey Springs will be removed for stocking by March 1, 2008 and a state-of-the-art fish rearing facility will be constructed at the site.
Cold-water hatcheries manager for the DGIF George Duckwall said in the coming winter season stocking will be fairly close to normal. But in the following three years before catchable size trout can be reared at Coursey Springs again, the total number of fish stocked will be reduced.
 | | The world-class trout fishing in the Jackson River tail waters below Gathright Dam is threatened by an invasive algae discovered in the river last year which is spreading across the river bottom near the dam and down the river past Natural Well. (Recorder photo by Charles Garratt) |
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"No one area will suffer," Duckwall said. All stocking locations will see a proportional reduction, he said.
Construction of the new $10 million facility at Coursey Springs will take 18-24 months. After it reopens, it will take about one year to raise fish to the minimum half-pound catchable size, thus putting the facility off-line for as long as three years.
The other cold-water hatcheries around the state will try to pick up the slack, but that may not be possible. Drought conditions throughout Virginia are causing problems at hatcheries this summer. Montebello in Nelson County is pumping water from a local creek to supplement low flows from the springs that normally feed the raceways. Even so, fish losses caused by low oxygen content in the water and low water flows are high, according to a hatchery worker.
Most of the stocking takes place in the fall, winter and spring, but raising trout is a 24/7, year-around operation. The state currently raises and stocks over a million catchable size trout each year.
Coursey Springs contributes 220,000 pounds of trout to that total each year - about 380,000 fish. The new facility will increase that total by 100,000 pounds per year, said Duckwall. In addition, the individual fish should be larger and healthier.
"Coursey Springs is a fish hatchery waiting to happen," Duckwall said of the current operation. The hatchery was built on a shoestring construction budget, he said. The mostly earthen structure of raceways is difficult to maintain and leaves the facility vulnerable to predators. In ad- dition, if the raceways became infected by the parasite that causes whirling disease in trout, eliminating the disease would be nearly impossible, according to Dave Kumien, executive director of the Whirling Disease Foundation.
Whirling disease was found in the Marion hatchery in the 1970s, Duckwall said. Marion is the oldest hatchery in the state and produces both trout from eggs and catchable size trout (see related story). The disease has not been found at any other hatchery or in the wild in Virginia.
The new Coursey Springs will be real investment for the future, said Duckwall. Instead of earthen raceways, fish will be raised in concrete bottomed, stainless steel tanks. The plans call for twenty 20-foot circular tanks and twenty 40-foot circular tanks. Each tank will have an independent water supply and will be covered to reduce losses to birds and otters.
Coursey Springs is able to produce so many fish because it has the largest water source of any hatchery in the state. The springs feeding the facility bubble up in a pond that gravity feeds the raceways. Renovations include boxing and covering the springs to prevent the growth of water plants and possible contamination of the water.
In addition to better control of the water source, the new equipment will include the ability to add oxygen. In the current operation, the fish in each section of the raceway live in the water from the section above. Pumps churn the water to add oxygen required by the trout, but fewer and fewer trout can be raised in each section as the temperature increases and the previous fish population depletes the oxygen.
The raceways from Coursey Springs empty into Spring Run with no treatment of the water other than what the watercress and algae growing in the lower raceways provide. The Department of Environment Quality placed Spring Run on the impaired waters list because of the discharge from Coursey Springs.
"We plan to make that creek cleaner than it has ever been," Duckwall said. The new facility will include treatment for the discharge from the hatchery tanks to remove nutrients and waste.
Visitors are welcome at all state fish hatcheries. The term "hatchery" is used even for facilities like Coursey Springs where no fish are actually "hatched." Currently visitors can walk along the raceways at Coursey Springs and see the different size trout. Duckwall says visitors will continue to be able to see the trout being raised in the new Coursey Springs.
The tanks will be mostly above ground and covered, but provisions will be made for visitors to view the tanks and fish, he said.
"Trout fishing is more than just catching fish," said Duckwall. The cost of raising and stocking fish is paid with revenue from fishing and special trout license sales. Those fees are "a real recreation bargain," he said.
Information on state hatcheries and the state wide stocking schedule can be found on the DGIF website at http:// www.dgif.state.va.us/FISHING/fish_stocking/. The renovations of Coursey Springs should not impact fishing until the spring and summer of 2009.
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