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Time in Norway: Monday 9:52:41 AM

Arkansas News Bureau    10/04/2005 09:33:31

Silo concept

turns out the trout

Joe Mosby

You don't have to show your Kroger card to go trout fishing in Arkansas, but there is a connection, one that's paying strong dividends.

Twenty years ago, the Cincinnati-based national grocery chain donated its trout hatchery near Mammoth Spring to the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission. It was not profitable for Kroger growing trout for table use, but the hatchery is now a cornerstone in getting trout into Arkansas waters for a growing number of fishermen.

Aerial view of the Jim Hinkle/Spring River State Fish hatchery shows the 11 new fish-raising silos in a row on the upper portion of the facility.

Trout are the primary product for the Jim Hinkle Spring River State Fish hatchery just south of Mammoth Spring in eastern Fulton County, although some other species of fish that require cool water have been raised by the AGFC.

The Arkansas Game and Fish Commission hatchery is unique, one of just two in the country, because it uses round pens called silos instead of the traditional rectangular raceways to grow the fish. Hatchery manager Melissa Jones said, "These silos can hold three times as many trout as raceways can."

With experience, modernization and expansion, the hatchery is producing about four times as many catchable-size trout as it did in 1985 when the AGFC obtained it. Jones said, "The first year we had it, we produced 275,000 trout. Now we're turning out a million or more trout a year."

The silo concept in fish hatcheries was developed by King Buss, a Pennsylvania fish biologist, and the Spring River facility in Arkansas is one of only two in the nation.

Trout are not native to Arkansas. They were introduced after the building of dams on several rivers wiped out native warm water fish because of the cold water that flowed from the bottom of the dams. Through acts of Congress, the federal government committed to supplying trout to Arkansas as mitigation or compensation for the loss of native fish.

Two federal hatcheries were built for this purpose at Norfork and at Greers Ferry. "If we have to give them trout, we'll just make them little trout" has been a rationale for years, but this has changed. Early on, the trout supplied by the federal hatcheries were 6-inchers, too small for fishermen's wants and sometimes too small to survive in the wild. This increased to 9-inchers, better but still not ideal.

When the Spring River hatchery went into use by the Game and Fish Commission the objective was taking the federal trout and growing them in the silos to 12-inch size then stocking them in fishing areas. Anglers responded well and vocally. They liked catching 12-inch trout rather than the 9-inch ones.

Today, there is a compromise, with both federal and Arkansas agencies using an 11-inch size for stocking trout.

The Spring River hatchery was built in 1974 as a commercial fish production plant by Marine Protein Inc. It changed hands twice, the second time going to Kroger, the nationwide supermarket chain. Kroger found it not profitable and donated the facility to the Game and Fish Commission in 1985. Recently, Jim Hinkle's name was added. He's a former AGFC commissioner, a Mountain View resident active on trout issues.

The hatchery is on an island in the Spring River and is next to Dam 3, one of a trio of dams built on the river in the early 20th Century for producing electricity. Originally, there were 31 of the big underground silos, each 17 and a half feet wide and 13 feet deep. The silos worked so well for the AGFC in producing fishable trout, the agency built 11 more and now uses a total of 47 silos.

First, though, trout are hatched inside and worked through a series of tanks. Other trout are brought in from federal trout hatcheries at Lake Norfork and at Greers Ferry Lake as 3- to 5-inch fingerlings and are grown to the prescribed 11-inch size.

Jones said, "We're raising rainbow trout and some cutthroat trout here. In the past, we did some work with paddlefish and some work with walleye. Now we're raising some tiger muskies with eggs we got from Pennsylvania. These will go into the Spring and White rivers."

Tiger muskies are a hybrid of muskellunge and northern pike and have been popular on a limited scale with Spring River anglers. They are a fishery management tool to help control populations of forage and rough fish like suckers and gizzard shad.

Large fish trucks are a major part of the Spring River hatchery operation. Jones said, "We have two or three trucks a day going out of here with trout." Food for the fish from baby to adult size comes in by trailer truck loads. "A truck load of food lasts two or three weeks," Jones said.

Several factors, including expansion, have helped increase production at the hatchery, Jones said.

"We have better feed available now. We have improved water-testing equipment, and we are more automated - no more hand dipping of the fish with nets. We have a net over the whole hatchery, and that has really reduced losses to great blue herons."