ERIE, Pa. _ Switch on the lights hanging above the long nursery trough and thousands of 1-inch rainbow trout race toward their morning feeding. It's a routine Bob Hetz has gotten used to over the years. Make that 50 years.
Hetz stands in a light rain just outside the 3-C-U nursery shed explaining the legacy and the process of steelhead husbandry to a busload of anglers visiting as part of an educational steelhead fishing trip organized by the Post-Gazette.
"This isn't your government dollars at work or a group of biologists or something," said Hetz, water dripping from the brim of his hat. "We're all volunteers, just doing this because we think it's important."
The sole survivor among the original founders of Erie's independent steelhead nurseries, Hetz now oversees eight sites in Erie County and a volunteer program that works in cooperation with the state Fish and Boat Commission. In October, at a banquet celebrating the 20th anniversary of the Pennsylvania Steelhead Association, Hetz was lauded for his decades of service and leadership of the co-op nursery program that has raised and stocked millions of steelhead, brown trout and brook trout.
Steelhead are lake-running rainbow trout. Similar to the journey taken by anadromous salmon, the rainbow fingerlings impress on themselves the specific chemical signature of the stream they leave as youth. During the years they live in lake waters, they physically change and when sexually mature return to their home streams as wily, tail-walking steelhead on "spawning runs."
But there's nothing natural about Pennsylvania steelhead. Smallmouth bass, walleye, northern pike, lake trout and other game species have lived in and around the region since the last Ice Age. But there is no history of Lake Erie-running rainbow trout returning to Pennsylvania waters, where their eggs cannot survive in the hard shale and soft silt creek bottoms. Although they're called "spawning runs," very few Pennsylvania steelhead successfully spawn.
The artificial steelhead fishery is paid for by angler dollars and donations to the co-op nursery program.
"The steelhead caught in Lake Erie and its tributaries are non-native to Lake Erie, and in Pennsylvania the population is maintained almost entirely by the rearing and stocking of hatchery fish," said Eric Levis, spokesman for the state Fish and Boat Commission. "This fishery would not be possible without the dedicated effort of PFBC steelhead hatcheries and the Cooperative Nursery Program."
The 3-C-U nursery, named for the initials of its founding fishing clubs, started in 1966 with just 800 fish taken from a Fish and Boat hatchery. By the late 1990s, the co-op nursery program was providing some 75,000 to 100,000 rainbow trout fingerlings per year to the steelhead fishery.
Fish and Boat originally gave the co-ops trout eggs collected at state-run hatcheries.
"But they're too expensive to raise from eggs," Hetz said. "It's a lot cheaper, and just better all around, to get them when they're 1-inch fry. We raise them through the fingerling stage and give them back to Fish and Boat when they're sublegal adolescents."
The nursery raceways are generally 4 feet wide, 2 feet deep and about 2,200 feet long. At the 3-C-U site, one of two raceways is run by the volunteers, Fish and Boat operates the rest. Maintenance and operation costs run upward of $7,500 annually. The most recently constructed covered nursery cost $8,600 in materials and was built by co-op volunteers.
Fish and Boat draws money to support its hatcheries and nurseries from license sale revenues. The co-ops raise money through donations. They get help from organizations including Trout Unlimited, Erie County Sportsmen, Gem City Outdoorsmen, Wesleyville Conservation, Erie Downriggers Club and S.O.N.S of Lake Erie, as well as support from individual steelhead anglers who recognize the program's value.
"These stockings continue to support a world-class fishery that attracts thousands of anglers from throughout the United States and around the world," said Levis. "Steelhead angling accounts for greater than 50 percent of the total sport fishing effort on Lake Erie, and generates approximately $10 million annually for Erie's economy."
Each autumn, the young hand-size rainbows are planted by Fish and Boat staff in 12 of Pennsylvania's Lake Erie tributaries and no-fishing nursery waters. Hetz said the fish lock onto the water properties and leave almost immediately. Over the years, he said, stocking points have moved closer to the creek mouths to ensure that more of the sublegal rainbows make it to the lake.
"The PFBC annually stocks over 1 million steelhead into Lake Erie and its tributaries," Levis said. "The Cooperative Nursery Unit, with partners like 3-C-U and the S.O.N.S. of Lake Erie, stocks another 75,000 into Lake Erie and the tributaries each year."
Some anglers have complained that in recent years some streams, particularly the larger of the eastern "mile streams," aren't getting the steelhead returns they saw in the past.
"(Fish and Boat) is stocking the million a year that they say their stocking, and they get a lot of them from us," said Hetz. "But in the last several years, they're putting a lot in Presque Isle Bay hoping the fish will return there. They want to create a new steelhead fishery for boat anglers in the bay."
Hetz said he doesn't think the plan is working.
"What happens is, those fish leave the bay right away and go out into the lake," he said. "Three years later when they come back, they don't have a home stream to go to. So they just run in any creek they can get into."
