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Randolph Hatchery Plays Key Role As Trout Season Begins

Four young friends display just a portion of the 12-15 inch brown trout they caught on opening day of trout season Saturday. From left: Toby Gifford, 12, of Frewsburg; Carter McKotch, 14, of Lakewood; Zachary Gifford, 13, of Frewsburg; and Austin McKotch. 10, of Lakewood. P-J photo by Deb Everts

RANDOLPH — There is prime trout fishing in Western New York, thanks to the Randolph Fish Hatchery that keeps the area’s streams and lakes stocked with brown, brook and rainbow trout.

Richard Borner, fish culturist and hatchery manager, said they did quite a bit of stocking during the first couple of weeks of March. He said they stocked all the manmade lakes — Case, Harwood, Allen, Quaker, and New Albion — with a combination of brook and brown trout.

On Friday, hatchery staff stocked 50 “brookies” into Paisley Pond, in East Randolph. Borner said the pond gets a small shot of brook trout a couple of times a year.

“It’s something local that we do,” he said. “It’s a nice place for kids and families to go because it’s a little easier to fish. Brook trout are a nice fish for a ‘put-and-take’ kind of situation. We put them in there (in Paisley Pond) because they are fun for the kids. They are a little bit more aggressive than brown trout and they will be caught.”

According to Borner, brook trout require the cleanest and highest water quality of all trouts. He said they now stock most of their brook trout in area lakes and don’t stock them in Allegany State Park much anymore. They’re trying to restore the “heritage strain,” he said, which are the wild brook trout, and they don’t want to mix them.

Hatchery Manager Richard Borner looks on as a hatchery employee carefully releases some trout into Little Conewango Creek at Price Corners, in the Town of Coldspring. P-J photo by Deb Everts

Borner said workers from the Randolph hatchery will be in the Dunkirk area this month where they will stock roughly 36,000 brown trout into Lake Erie.

“We stock right to the end of May,” he said. “Most streams get two increments of fish but, sometimes throughout the course of the spring, we’ll do three different stockings on a stream. That’s all set by the Regional Biologist of Allegany.”

Fisheries Biologist Scott Cornett, Department of Environmental Conservation Region 9, said the number of trout stocked is based on habitat, food supply and streams and it doesn’t change much from year-to-year.

He said the DEC conducts surveys to determine how many trout are stocked.

Anglers, students and members of Trout Unlimited often volunteer to meet a truck laden with trout from the Randolph Fish Hatchery. Borner said students from Randolph, Ellicottville, Ashville BOCES and Ellicottville BOCES, as well as McKinley High School, in Buffalo, volunteer regularly at numerous times throughout the year.

“We had several tours last fall during our ‘egg take season’ when we’re taking eggs. A lot of these school groups also help us stock in the spring,” he said. “I know McKinley helped Barry (Hohmann) on the Cattaraugus Creek just the other day, and Ashville BOCES helped stock Goose Creek in Chautauqua County.”

According to Borner, the capacity of the hatchery’s stocking truck is 6,000, 8-inch fish. He said they can haul about 400-pounds of fish in each one of the tanks on the truck, so it carries almost a ton of fish.

“The bigger the fish, the more weight we can haul,” he said. “It’s kind of weird, but the way I like to tell people is if you have a lot of small fish, there are more mouths using up the oxygen in the water. Therefore, with a bigger fish, we can put more weight in there, but not necessarily more fish.”

The warmer weather this winter effected the fish, but in a good way, according to Borner who said it was an excellent fish-growing season. He said the water at the Randolph Hatchery is spring-fed so, with the milder temperatures and the water staying warmer this winter, the metabolism of the hatchery fish drops as the water temperature drops.

“Normally, in January and February, it can get brutally cold here and we’ll sometimes see our water temperatures in the high 30s or hovering around 40 degrees,” he said. “Our water temperature has been right around 47 to 48 degrees.

Optimum growing temperature for trout is right around 50 and up to about 54 degrees. When you get into that temperature range, the fish metabolize food very well and they put a lot of weight on.

So, it was a good winter for them and we have some real nice trout we are stocking this spring.”

Besides water temperature, both at the hatchery and in the streams, flooding can effect the fish. Borner said even in high water conditions, the staff can stock, as long as the water doesn’t come over the banks. When the waters overflow, the fish are in danger of getting trapped in pools that are not in the stream channel.

For weekly updates on fishing conditions, catches and trout stocking, anglers can check the Western New York Fishing Hotline online at dec.ny.gov or call the Stocking Hotline at 358-4950.

Anyone needing more fishing information or who would like to contribute to the fishing report, should call Fishery Biologist Mike Todd at 851-7010 or email him at fwfish9@dec.ny.gov.

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