My First Morning at the Haliburton Fish Hatchery
Since 1998, the Haliburton Fish Hatchery has stocked local lakes with over 600,000 fish: most of these are trout, including the Haliburton Gold, a unique strain of lake trout, and walleye. The fact that the organization is made up almost exclusively of volunteers makes the feat even more impressive. Since I moved to Eagle Lake (and plan on fishing Haliburton County more often), I figured I should do my part to help the cause.
I learned the basics on my first morning. Cleaning the indoor tanks is fairly straightforward. First, we brush the tops of the sides of the tanks. Then, we gently sweep the bottoms to get rid of excess feed and fish shit. Once the tanks have been cleaned, we put some feed on a little contraption which slowly distributes it to the fish over the course of 24 hours. Simple enough. Water temperature, oxygen content, and any mortalities are recorded.
Other volunteers check on the eggs that are being incubated. They look for dead eggs. The healthy ones are somewhat orange in colour and the dead ones are white. They're removed to prevent disease. It's a delicate procedure, taking out the dead eggs without harming the healthy ones - like playing the game "Operation".
A few outdoor ponds sit just outside of the main building. There, we feed the rainbow trout and clean the screens on the culverts so that water can flow freely from one pond to the other. As you can see in my Instagram video, the trout were active on this cold November morning!
I learned many interesting facts on my first trip (I didn't know that juvenile walleye are extremely cannibalistic whereas the trout aren't!), and I look forward to learning a lot more. The volunteers here really do a great job.
Greg Cholkan is a lawyer, fisherman and Hemingway impersonator. He works in Huntsville and Haliburton with Barriston LLP and his practice focuses on real estate, wills and estates, and business matters. Follow him on Twitter: @gregcholkan
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| One of the outdoor ponds |
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| Fancy feeding machine. The lake trout in the background are about a year old. |
A few outdoor ponds sit just outside of the main building. There, we feed the rainbow trout and clean the screens on the culverts so that water can flow freely from one pond to the other. As you can see in my Instagram video, the trout were active on this cold November morning!
I learned many interesting facts on my first trip (I didn't know that juvenile walleye are extremely cannibalistic whereas the trout aren't!), and I look forward to learning a lot more. The volunteers here really do a great job.
Greg Cholkan is a lawyer, fisherman and Hemingway impersonator. He works in Huntsville and Haliburton with Barriston LLP and his practice focuses on real estate, wills and estates, and business matters. Follow him on Twitter: @gregcholkan
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