By Ashley Loza

Kern Valley Sun

The Kern River Fish Hatchery received a new shipment of trout on Thursday, Nov. 16.

According to Friends of the Hatchery President Patrick Fitzgerald, it’s the first time the hatchery has seen fish in 14 months.

While it’s been a long time since residents and visitors got to fish a fully-stocked Kern River, it’s for a good reason – the hatchery has been undergoing renovations that will allow it to bring a population of native trout back to the Kern River.

The hatchery, built in 1928, was the first hatchery in California, according to Friends of the Hatchery volunteer Bob Talbot. It was an experimental hatchery at the time, built to address the shrinking native trout population.

Over time, fishing has caused the native population to dwindle, and the small hatchery could not spawn large numbers of fish to repopulate the river. Native golden trout are generally found much further north, while the Kern River Rainbow Trout, a candidate for designation as an endangered species, is now extremely rare because of years of angling and hybridization with other species brought in for stocking.

Until last year’s renovations, non-native, sterile trout were brought to the hatchery from Fresno, and they had been housed at the hatchery until they were ready to stock the river. However, because of their sterility, the population still dwindled when overfished.

According to Ed Michel, a California Department of Fish & Wildlife (CDFW) Tech at the hatchery, with the new upgrades, the facility can begin spawning its own natives.

The process begins by pouring new trout into outdoor tanks where they can be separated by sex and size. The hatchery now boasts several new self-cleaning outdoor tanks and “raceways,” where native adult trout can be separated and grown before some of them are put together in a new spawning area. The pregnant females are then brought into the hatchery building into tanks where their stress levels are tightly controlled via water temperature, water levels, oxygen levels, and protection from other environmental variables.

The inside of these tanks are to be camouflaged and decorated with logs and rocks to mimic nature as closely as possible and keep the stress level of the fish to a minimum.

When finally ready to be released into the river, CDFW will determine which trout are genetically superior and raise them for when the previous trout are no longer able to spawn. The rest will be stocked into the river, where they will slowly repopulate naturally and replace the sterile population.

The most exciting part of this process will be the return of the rare Kern River Rainbow Trout. The hatchery was supposed to receive them this September, but because of delays caused by the renovations, they will have to wait until next fall.

Talbot says that they also have plans for spawning Golden Trout, which they have not done for many years now.

Michel, who was born and raised in the Kern River Valley, is happy to see the changes that the renovations will bring, as he returned to the hatchery last year after many years out of state. As a teenager, Michel had worked at the hatchery as a seasonal employee in 1988, and he says that fishing in the river is notably different from what he remembers as a child.

He says that the process of caring for the fish can be a little stressful but is mostly fun, and he is enthusiastic about the changes the new spawning process will make for the river.

“Fishing on this river is the heartbeat of this valley,” said Michel.