Animal Crackers, The perfect snack food.

So, we have been fish people for a little while now. Here is some info about the Bandon Hatchery. The hatchery has a total of 10 tanks, of which six are normally used to raise fish at different times during the year. Three types of fish are raised here during the year. Steelhead Trout, Chinook Salmon, and Rainbow Trout. Annually they raise about 125,000 Steelhead, 500,000 Salmon, and 2,000 Rainbows. In addition to the outdoor ponds there are six indoor tanks and hundreds of incubator tray to start the eggs in.

So, the Rainbow Trouts are called the trophy trouts here, because they are raised to good sized 2 1/2 pound fish, and then they are used to stock several of the local ponds and lakes. These fish are started at another hatchery and raised to almost full-size and then they are transferred to Bandon to get them to full weight and then transfer out from here. They are normally hauled out 150 to 250 at a time every few weeks.

The Steelhead are spawned here at Bandon and are raised for a full year at this facility to be released in the local river in mid-April. The eggs are spawned from adult Steelhead that are taken for various areas of the river. The eggs are then placed in the incubators for several weeks. Once they are ready, they will be transferred into the indoor tanks to be raised for a few months, and then when they are up to size they will be transferred to the outdoor tanks. When the fish are ready to be taken to the river, they will be about 5.6 fish per pound and about 5 inches long.

The Chinook Salmon are also raised here in Bandon completely. They go through a similar process to the Steelhead. They will be transferred out of the hatchery at the end of May.

So, how do you move 125,000 fish in a reasonable amount of time? Well you use some 2,300 gallon tanker trucks, and you use a fish pump. A fish pump, you say? Yes, it is just like a fire pump, but the fish can go through it without harm. It is quite a process that takes two days to complete and allot of careful preparation. The steelhead trout are the most difficult fish to transport of the three that they do transport. They are fairly fragile at this stage and they are large loads as well. Most of the tanker loads were between 1,800 and 2,400 pounds of fish. So you do the math 5.6 fish per pound, that is allot of fish.

Here are some photos of the equipment. This is the fish pump. The fish get sucked up through the pipe into their pond, they pass through the pump and up to the separator at the top. The fish go into the truck, and the excess water goes back into the creek. To load 2000 pounds of fish takes about 10 minutes.



These are the two types of tankers we used. The International straight truck is Bandon’s tanker. It holds 2,300 gallons of water in a single tank. The tractor trailer is the regional office truck and it has two 1200 gallon tanks. In this case, it just meant that we had to load two separate tanks, but it can be nice for two different types of fish, or two loads of fish that are going to different locations. The tractor trailer looks new, but it is actually a 1991.





Next I have a few short non-narrated movies of the steelhead. There are 50,000 of them in this pond, so it is interesting when it is feeding time. This is just a few handfuls of feed, imagine what it is like when you throw out 25 pounds of feed on the water.

And lastly this is what the confused little fish do with their spare time. They got the right idea to head up river, but too bad for them these are just the water intakes for the pond. Nowhere to go from here.

So, that is it for now. This week, I expect my normal spelling checks and grammer corrections from the gallery, but I am sure that Greeson will fully explain everything that I got wrong.

R.J.