Ripple. — General Routine of a Trout Hatchery 107 



Our station at Bayfield has a capacity of about 20 double 

 hatching troughs, 11 boxes long, 22 boxes to the double trough, 

 each box holding 7 trays at two quarts per tray. When the hatch- 

 ery is filled with its quota of lake trout, brook trout and brown 

 trout eggs, it means many millions. Only those of you who have 

 the thing to do can realize what effort it takes to fill these many 

 stations, especially in the case of the lake trout, as they must be 

 netted in the Great Lakes by the commercial fishermen in the 

 late fall. Only one who has experienced the work can tell what a 

 fight with the elements and unfavorable conditions it means to 

 bring home each fall this harvest of spawn. 



The spawning season over, the responsibilities grow heavy on 

 the hatchery men. Millions of fish lives are contained in those 

 eggs. The running water is passing over them, and must be kept 

 passing. The ten to twenty-five per cent of infertile eggs must be 

 removed as they begin to decay. Instead of the time-worn plan 

 of picking them out with tweezers by hand, we use the more 

 modern method, the brine box. In this the trays are placed, 

 several at a time, the brine solution allowing the bad eggs, which 

 are lighter, to come to the top, where they are scraped off with a 

 small net. Two men, in the same time, now do what it formerly 

 took eight or ten men to do. 



For 110 days, on the average, these millions of eggs must remain 

 on the hatchery trays, bringing the hatching season along into 

 March or the latter part of February, in our locality. When the 

 lake trout fry are ready, being some six weeks old, they are taken 

 out in boats and planted on the reefs and spawning beds, where 

 they would naturally hatch. I can not attempt to tell in so brief 

 an article what their lot would have been had they remained on 

 those reefs for 110 days. We have prevented, however, some of 

 that tremendous loss that occurs yearly in nature. 



The millions of brook and other trout fry are now placed in the 

 various feeding tanks and rearing ponds, and again, as always, the 

 hatchery man has his work cut out for him. 



Shipping time is now at hand. The tanks are full of fry, 

 taking their food six times a day, ready to go out into the streams, 

 and it is with much rush of cans and men, etc., that they are 

 started out on life's journey. Every outgoing baggage car must 

 take its shipment or shipments of trout. Not only the baggage 



