Federal fish hatchery hopes for better luck after dismal winter

Sunday, May 28, 2000 | 10:02 a.m.

Now, Lahontan National Fish Hatchery officials are upbeat with the recent arrival of 750,000 eggs of the endangered game fish.

"It's always nice when you start the whole cycle over again. It energizes us," hatchery supervisor Larry Marchant told The Record-Courier newspaper of Gardnerville.

"We're optimistic, but still keeping our fingers crossed."

The hatchery south of Gardnerville received a fourth and final shipment of eggs last week from the Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe Fish Hatchery, 30 miles northeast of Reno.

About 180,000 eggs were rushed Wednesday to the federal hatchery's inside tanks for incubation. Another 570,000 eggs were delivered to the hatchery in recent weeks.

Plans call for the 750,000 eggs to mature and develop into fingerlings over the next year.

The hatchery raises about 600,000 cutthroat for annual release into the region's Pyramid and Walker lakes and Truckee River.

Of those, more than half will be released next spring into Pyramid Lake and the rest will go to Walker Lake and the Truckee River, Marchant said.

The hatchery met its goal of stocking Walker with 135,000 cutthroat this year, but wasn't able to send any to Pyramid because of the outbreak of Furunculosis, a bacteria found naturally in northern Nevada's watersheds.

In February, the hatchery destroyed more than 334,000 of the fish in an effort to stop the spread of the disease. Another 80,000 fish had died before then.

Then in March, another 61,000 fish were destroyed after a new outbreak of the disease.

"It's just a common part of running a fish hatchery," Marchant said. "When you raise fish, you're going to lose fish all the time."

Since then, the hatchery has been sterilized and a well there has been identified as the most likely source of the disease.

"(We) may not operate that well at all this year - it will make us a little tight, but if we need to, we could do it," Marchant told The Record-Courier.

Lahontan cutthroat are listed as a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act. Though protected, they are allowed to be caught by anglers because of hatchery production programs.