Due to the wildly fluctuating water levels and temperatures in Arizona’s waterways, the fish population doesn’t exactly thrive. And when fish don’t thrive, they don’t reproduce.
Enter fish hatcheries, like the one along Tonto Creek on the Mogollon Rim. Here, and at several others like it around the state, conditions are controlled to give fish a prime breeding ground.
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Tonto Creek Hatchery raises rainbow trout from eggs to stocking size – roughly ten inches. It takes the better part of a year for the fish “graduate” from incubator to tank to the raceways shown below. When they’re big enough for stocking they’re relocated to lakes and streams around Arizona’s rim country.
The Tonto Hatchery raises approximately 15% of the state’s rainbow trout.
When I was growing up in So. AZ, several families would regularly gather in the summer for a fish fry, sharing the Rainbow trout they had caught, and supplementing with various other dishes, my favorite being hushpuppies 🙂
I don’t know if fish hatcheries existed when I was growing up but I’m thankful for their support of the fish population.