BURLINGTON—Byron State Fish Hatchery serves as a maternity ward … for fish.
Managed by the Oklahoma Department of Wildlife Conservation, this facility north of Salt Plains State Park in Alfalfa County houses several species of fish in all stages of life before they’re released into lakes and ponds around the state.
The Northwest Oklahoma hatchery has been in operation since 1929 with the artesian aquifer serving as its natural water source. (An artesian well is a well that brings groundwater to the surface without pumping because it is under pressure within a body of rock or sediment known as an aquifer.) The original fishhouse with the rusty roof is now the tool shop where staff builds the holding tanks. The current fishhouse was built in the late 1980s.
Colter Fluman, a 2000 graduate of Chisholm High School, has been on staff since 2008 when he came on board for a summer internship. Shortly thereafter, one of the conservation team members retired so “I stepped right in,” he said, and has been there ever since.
Fluman serves as the assistant hatchery manager and lives on site with his wife and two teenage sons as does the hatchery manager and his family.
The Enid native never imagined he’d work on a fish farm. He graduated from Oklahoma State University with a bachelor’s degree in wildlife management with the intent of snagging a job within the state wildlife department. He jumped at the chance of the internship an hour’s drive from home.
“I will be here until I retire,” Fluman said.
Byron State Fish Hatchery is farming, he said, meaning his job as a fish farmer equates to always being on call like it does for any farmer. He added that life is never dull because it’s constantly changing.
The birth of a fish
So what is a fish hatchery?
According to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, a fish hatchery is an artificial breeding, hatching, and rearing facility where aquatic animals (such as finfish, shellfish, and crustaceans) are cultivated in controlled environments. Their primary purpose is to produce larval and juvenile fish—called fry or fingerlings—for conservation, commercial food production, and/or recreational fishing.
Byron State Fish Hatchery operates like a typical fish hatchery, following a well-monitored progression, including:
- Broodstock management, which is the careful selection of adult fish to ensure strong genetics.
- Egg collection of eggs and sperm artificially extracted and mixed to achieve fertilization.
- Incubation of fertilized eggs in specialized tanks that mimic natural, oxygenated stream environments until they hatch.
- Rearing, which is nurturing the hatched larvae through early life stages and feeding them a nutrient-rich, commercially manufactured diet until they are juvenile fish ready for release into area lakes and ponds.
“The hybrid striped bass is what we make the most of,” Fluman said. This fish is the cross of a striped bass female and a white bass male. Eligible candidates are captured below the dam of Tulsa’s Keystone Lake or Eufaula Lake and brought back to the hatchery to spawn.
Other species produced locally are walleye, saugeye, sauger, striped bass, hybrid sunfish (cross between a female green sunfish and a male blue gill, not to be confused with perch), and channel catfish. Intensive egg culture occurs during the early spring from March to May.
The ovulation process is very meticulous, Fluman said. The conservation team ensures the water temperature is optimal at 68 degrees for the spawning to happen. If the water is off even a few degrees either too hot at 73 or too cold at 60, it can break down the membranes of the two egg sacks on either side of the female fish’s abdomen, he explained.
They use an anesthetic on the female fish they are extracting eggs during the wet fertilization procedure, which is adding water to “turn on” the combined milk (sperm) and eggs. To actively fertilize these eggs, Fluman said, they stir the mixture in the petri dish-like pan with a turkey feather before cleaning the fertilized eggs and adding them to the incubation jar. The whole procedure takes about 10 minutes.
There are 75,000 fertilized eggs per pound in the 500mL jars, so 30 pounds equals 2 million potentially viable eggs. Fluman said that on average 60-70% of those eggs turn into actual fish.
Incubation window is between 52 to 60 hours before they hatch. The eggs that turn yellowish white and float to the top of the jar were either dead from the beginning or died after being transferred to the jar versus those that are brownish green are alive.
Ready for harvest
In early April, Byron State Fish Hatchery staff drove 10 hours to Nebraska to pick up 8.4 million walleye and 12 million saugeye for breeding. At the time of this interview in mid-April, 200,000 walleye were actively hatching and 1.2 million were in the tank ready for transport to their new home at Canton Lake for the annual Walleye Rodeo in May. At any time, there may be 3 million walleye housed in one tank.
Fluman said there are 10 custom-built holding tanks, meaning up to 30 million juvenile fish aka frys can swim on site. Additionally, there are 16 aquariums each housing up to 200,000 larvae fish in the fishhouse.
“We have the ability to house 35 million frys at a time,” he said.
If winter was warm, however, Fluman said, there are less eggs to fertilize and thus not as many fish for that crop. Byron State Fish Hatchery stocks lakes and ponds from Fort Supply to Lawton, from Ponca City to Canton.
Several thousand fish may be moved to one of the other three state fish hatcheries to be stocked elsewhere in Oklahoma later. At the time of this interview, fish were being relocated to Holdenville State Fish Hatchery in the southeastern part of the state.
The growout of the fish before harvest happens in one of 20 production ponds at Byron State Fish Hatchery. A walleye will spend between 38 and 45 days in the pond before being loaded on a truck to fill what Fluman called “the grocery list.” A hybrid striped bass only spends 25 to 35 days in the pond. Blue gill takes five months and the hybrid sunfish live there for two years. There are multiple crops in production ponds each year.
Not all of the ponds are in use at the same time. The ponds are rotated and given time to dry and rest, much like farmers do with their fields. At this time in April, only 10 ponds had water in them while the others had been drained.
The grass at the bottom of the ponds acts as the fertilizer for the ponds, but Fluman said there’s a fine line in the heat of summer when the overfertilization causes bacteria to have a heyday, depleting the oxygen and killing the fish.
Byron State Fish Hatchery’s ponds and three reservoirs are cascading in a horseshoe-shaped basin and all connected by pipes and drains. This allows for damming and draining in order to herd the fish during harvest. The ponds were renovated in the late 1970s and early 1980s with another renovation happening in the 2010s.
And all of the water throughout the property flows into the lower reservoir on the far west side of the hatchery.
“We recycle all the water,” Fluman said. “It’s conservation at its best.”
When the staff are not harvesting fish, they’re focused on pond maintenance, oxygen levels, groundskeeping, and general outdoor maintenance. That may even mean draining the ponds on the weekend and brushing algae from the fine aluminum screens or fertilizing a dry pond.
“I’ve rebuilt everything in this fishhouse,” Fluman said, and he has replumbed and repainted. “We do everything ourselves such as tearing apart and maintaining equipment and starting shop projects.”
They also give tours of the hatchery for those interested in fish farming.
Byron State Fish Hatchery, two miles north and one mile west from the intersection of Oklahoma 11 and 38, offers guided tours to the public Monday through Friday from 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.; however, the springtime is the best time for school tours. Call (580) 474-2663 to schedule a tour.
Learn more about the Oklahoma Department of Wildlife Conservation, its events and current practices at Facebook.com/OkWildlifeDept. Those interested in stocking their farm ponds can apply for the farm pond fish stocking program at wildlifedepartment.com/lands-and-minerals/pond-management/stocking-program.