Winter Trout Spawn The scene is a trout angler’s dream come
true. Or nightmare of the highest order. All around this corner
of the Manchester trout hatchery, 2-pound, 3-pound…7 and 8-pound
rainbow trout splash in holding tanks. Glistening, colorful…but
with no room to flip a fly or redworm. “We’re spawning rainbow
trout today,” explains Randy Mack, DNR hatchery technician, as
he and two co-workers wrestle 40 female trout (the big ones) and
a similar number of smaller males inside the Manchester
hatchery. Longtime hatchery technician Kenny Linderwell ‘trays’
the fertilized eggs and sets them into place along the wall. A
constant flow of 52 degree water washes over them for about 30
days. The water quantity and quality here have meant a trout
hatchery has been on the premises for more than a century. “We
normally spawn enough to produce about 250,000 catchable-sized
rainbow trout,” explains Mack. “In the wild, rainbow trout in
Iowa reproduce very poorly. We spawn them here and raise them
for a year and a half,