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When the Saratoga National Fish Hatchery sent out an appeal for help with their annual spawning, the call was heard in Neosho.
Dave Hendrix, manager of the Neosho National Fish Hatchery, contracted members of his friends group about volunteering in Wyoming. My husband Russell and I, along with Don and Denise Jessen, answered the call. Russell is president of the Friends of the Neosho National Fish Hatchery and Don serves on the board. Our purpose is to first support the local hatchery and then give any help we can to other hatcheries.
After contacting Saratoga manager Lee Bender and setting a date, we packed our work clothing, our civilian clothes, our bedding, and some food and made the nearly 1,100 mile journey from Missouri to Wyoming.
Bender allowed us to use an empty staff house and we were grateful for heat, lighting, kitchen facilities—and no motel bill.
We arrived on Monday, Oct. 10. We bought our food at the local grocery story, had dinner at the Hotel Wolf Restaurant and then settled in for the night.
The following morning, we reported to work. And work we did.
None of us had ever done hatchery work (we were three retired school teachers and one writer) but we did our best. We were joined by two women — an employee and a volunteer with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
On Tuesday, our job was to help spawn about 100 brown trout. One of our Missouri team donned waders and spent the entire morning in a raceway, with water over his waist, coaxing eggs from female trout.
Another member carried bucket after bucket of eggs to a neighboring building where the other two helped rinse the eggs and put them in an iodine solution for disinfection.
We were very happy that on our first day, we spawned 549,648 brown trout eggs.
But we soon learned that Tuesday was just a warm up. On Wednesday, we would be faced with doing not 100 trout, but a staggering 300.
And we thought we were tired Tuesday night.
Wednesday dawned and we faced 300 lake trout. Again, we worked “squeezing” eggs out of fish, cleaning and disinfecting them, and then placing them in PVC “jars.” They will be kept in Saratoga until they are shipped out to national fish hatcheries across the country.
Our total for Wednesday was 2,263,389 lake trout eggs.
We were told it was a great day, and rarely a crew gets that many eggs in one day. Our total for two days of volunteer work was 2,813,037.
Our trip to the Saratoga National Fish Hatchery, as well as our few visits into the city of Saratoga, were most enjoyable. Our only regret is that the fish hatchery there doesn’t have any “friends.” We hope that one day, the people in the area will see the value of the hatchery and its contribution to our country and reach out to help.
Ideally, they would form a friends group for the Saratoga National Fish
Hatchery.
Whether the friends help with the spawning, with school group tours, or even with such things as helping clean and maintain the facility, four people from Neosho will vouch that it is a good thing to do.
When the Saratoga National Fish Hatchery sent out an appeal for help with their annual spawning, the call was heard in Neosho.
Dave Hendrix, manager of the Neosho National Fish Hatchery, contracted members of his friends group about volunteering in Wyoming. My husband Russell and I, along with Don and Denise Jessen, answered the call. Russell is president of the Friends of the Neosho National Fish Hatchery and Don serves on the board. Our purpose is to first support the local hatchery and then give any help we can to other hatcheries.
After contacting Saratoga manager Lee Bender and setting a date, we packed our work clothing, our civilian clothes, our bedding, and some food and made the nearly 1,100 mile journey from Missouri to Wyoming.
Bender allowed us to use an empty staff house and we were grateful for heat, lighting, kitchen facilities—and no motel bill.
We arrived on Monday, Oct. 10. We bought our food at the local grocery story, had dinner at the Hotel Wolf Restaurant and then settled in for the night.
The following morning, we reported to work. And work we did.
None of us had ever done hatchery work (we were three retired school teachers and one writer) but we did our best. We were joined by two women — an employee and a volunteer with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
On Tuesday, our job was to help spawn about 100 brown trout. One of our Missouri team donned waders and spent the entire morning in a raceway, with water over his waist, coaxing eggs from female trout.
Another member carried bucket after bucket of eggs to a neighboring building where the other two helped rinse the eggs and put them in an iodine solution for disinfection.
We were very happy that on our first day, we spawned 549,648 brown trout eggs.
But we soon learned that Tuesday was just a warm up. On Wednesday, we would be faced with doing not 100 trout, but a staggering 300.
And we thought we were tired Tuesday night.
Wednesday dawned and we faced 300 lake trout. Again, we worked “squeezing” eggs out of fish, cleaning and disinfecting them, and then placing them in PVC “jars.” They will be kept in Saratoga until they are shipped out to national fish hatcheries across the country.
Our total for Wednesday was 2,263,389 lake trout eggs.
We were told it was a great day, and rarely a crew gets that many eggs in one day. Our total for two days of volunteer work was 2,813,037.
Our trip to the Saratoga National Fish Hatchery, as well as our few visits into the city of Saratoga, were most enjoyable. Our only regret is that the fish hatchery there doesn’t have any “friends.” We hope that one day, the people in the area will see the value of the hatchery and its contribution to our country and reach out to help.
Ideally, they would form a friends group for the Saratoga National Fish
Hatchery.
Whether the friends help with the spawning, with school group tours, or even with such things as helping clean and maintain the facility, four people from Neosho will vouch that it is a good thing to do.
