Where did those young fry’s parents likely come from?

Right here at the Allegheny National Fish Hatchery at the base of Kinzua Dam.

“These fry were likely produced by adult fish we stocked as juveniles that grew up to adults and finally found good spawning habitat,” Hatchery Manager Larry Miller said.

According to the DEC, biologists recently determined that adult lake trout levels had risen to the place where reproduction could be detected. “Although the number of wild lake trout fry collected earlier in 2021 was small, the discovery of evidence that lake trout are spawning and their eggs are surviving and successfully hatching is historic.”

Times Observer photo by Josh Cotton Allegheny National Fish Hatchery Manager Larry Miller holds one of the trout that will reside in the Hatchery until next May.

The wild fry were collected by New York’s Department of Environmental Conservation, Lake Erie Fisheries Research Unit this spring in “fry traps on a rock reef about five miles west of Barcelona Harbor in Chautauqua County.”

Miller said an ultrasonic telemetry study revealed that lake trout had been observed congregating on that shoal.

“It’s a big partner activity,” Miller explained. Agencies involved include the Fish and Wildlife Service, which operates the hatchery, New York’s DEC, U.S. Geological Survey, Pa. Fish and Boat Commission, Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources, the Great Lakes Acoustic Telemetry Observation System and the Great Lakes Fishery Commission.

The Allegheny National Fish Hatchery dates to the early 1970s.

“We’ve been working on it since then, intensively since the 1980s,” Miller explained. “Finally, we got over the last three to four years the population of spawning size adults (we) thought we would start to see production. It’s not enough that we would stop stocking yet.”

The DEC highlighted that lake trout were once“the top predator in Lake Erie but that commercial fishing starting in the late 1700s until the 1930s seriously harmed populations. In the 1960s, officials considered lake trout “extirpated,” or destroyed completely, from Lake Erie. Stocking efforts began in 1982.

The Hatchery was once a one-stop shop — brood stock that would provide the eggs that would be grown into the yearling trout stocked in the Great Lakes. Over the years, though, they’ve observed their well water getting a little bit warmer. That had an effect on the viability of the eggs so the eggs are now packed on ice and shipped here.

Lake trout typically spawn in October-November. “We get the eggs around December,” Miller explained. “They start hatching in late December or January.” They’re grown in smaller green tanks until they reach two to three inches in lengths before they head out to the Hatchery’s raceway typically in June.

The current phase of the process is tagging each of the over 500,000 fish. That process started last week and will continue this week. In addition to a one millimeter tag inserted in the nose, the adipose fin is also clipped, a much more visible sign when the trout is eventually caught that it was hatchery-raised.

This batch will stay at the Hatchery

until next May when stocking will commence. At that point, they’ll be six to eight inches long.

The Hatchery will stock about 200,000 fish in Lake Erie, Miller said, as well as 320,000 in Lake Ontario. They’re also working with different strains to explore what strains — Lake Champlagne, Seneca Lake, Lake Huron/Perry Sound — to see which perform the best.

The ultimate goal for the restoration effort, he said, will be for 70 percent of Great Lakes lake trout to have the adipose fin, meaning that they’re wild.

Miller said natural reproduction has already been found in Lake Ontario and they know the fish were raised at the hatchery because of the genetic information discovered.

“Those are the only adult fish that are out there right now,” he said.

That might be a long way out, but this summer’s discovery is a crucial step in the process.

“It’s very rewarding,” Miller said of the discovery. “My staff are all proud of the work they did, not just the staff that are here. It’s generations of people. This hatchery has been open since 1973 and we’ve been stocking lake trout pretty much since then.

“It’s on their back. It’s really rewarding to see.”