Published - Thursday, October 20, 2005

By DAN SIMMONS, La Crosse Tribune - Reprinted with permission

GENOA, Wis. — “Look at that big one!” yelled Shawn Schaitel, 16, pointing at a largemouth bass about the size of his arm. It lurked just beneath the surface of an algae-filled, green-tinted pond at Genoa National Fish Hatchery. Schaitel, a junior at Melrose-Mindoro High School, spent the morning at the hatchery along with Bailley Anderson, 16, of Arcadia, Wis., and Phillip Cathey, 15, of Independence, Wis. The three avid anglers got a tour of the hatchery from Nick Starzl, a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service fisheries biologist. But they also got the hands-on-fish experience of a day in Starzl’s work life. They were there as part of the Disability Mentoring Day 2005, “a national effort to promote the employment of persons with disabilities.”

Schaitel loves fish so much he’s doing an independent learning project focused on aquaculture. Anderson’s family has three ponds on its property, stocked with many panfish and walleye that have found themselves at the end of her line. Cathey snagged a 24-pound striped bass last summer in a river near his grandparents’ house in Georgia.

Consensus: A bad day at the hatchery beats the best day at school. Except it was a perfect day at the hatchery, with clear skies and plenty of sun. Even better, it’s harvest season — the tens of thousands of eggs that arrived in February have grown into adolescent fish, swimming furiously around the dozens of enormous tubs at the complex, waiting to be shipped away to life on the outside. The rainbow trout are going to Fort McCoy, to be stocked in ponds for people to catch. Coaster brook trout will be sent, among other places, to the Great Lakes to live in the deep.

“See this,” Starzl said, holding a toothpick-sized perch minnow, “This is the baby. Now, let’s meet Mom and Dad.” He reached into a black plastic bucket and pulled out an adult perch, the same black vertical stripes and yellow tint as the minnow, except ten times larger. Anderson said she most enjoyed “all the different kinds of fish I’d never seen,” including lake sturgeon, channel catfish and many varieties of endangered mussels. Cathey said, “It’s pretty cool to see how they raise the fish.” Schaitel said the trip makes him want to be a fisheries biologist, mainly because of the hatchery’s mission to grow endangered fish species. He’s also considering a career in fish farming. “But I’m more interested in saving fish than raising them up to kill them,” he said.

Dan Simmons can be reached at (608) 791-8217 or dsimmons@lacrossetribune.com.