Broodstock Yellow Perch used for spawning in Genoa National Fish Hatchery rearing ponds.

As spring sets in during mid-March the biologists at the Genoa National Fish Hatchery (NFH) begin preparing captive broodstocks of fish for their annual production.  The hatchery, located in southwestern Wisconsin along the banks of the Mississippi and Bad Axe Rivers, is home to hundreds of adult captively reared sport fish of six species.  These fish are maintained at the hatchery for the sole purpose of producing millions of progeny in order to fulfill federal, tribal and state cooperator fishery management goals. 

The Genoa NFH annually produces hundreds of thousands of large and smallmouth bass, yellow perch, bluegills and other species to meet fishery requests on National Wildlife Refuges, military installations, tribal governments, and cooperative management projects with states and universities. 

The process for filling these requests begins in March when station biologists harvest brood rearing ponds and sort fish into species and then place the fish into production ponds on the hatchery grounds.  Once the waters in the ponds warm to the species-specific requirements the fish begin to reproduce on their own.  Depending on the species or particular management goal the ponds are harvested from early July until late autumn.  Once the adults are removed from the ponds they are placed in a communal overwintering pond until the next spring when the process begins again. 

Throughout the year the brood fish are fed a diet of hatchery produced forage fish in addition to a diet of insects and other natural foods derived from the ponds.  To assure that only top quality fish are produced and stocked, the hatchery brood fish and the young of the year fish are laboratory tested for specific disease-causing pathogens.  Only after a clean bill of health is attained for each lot of fish can the fish be used for propagation and stocking purposes.