Fish Hatchery

While Ryan was in his workshop, I had to keep the kids occupied in Cold Lake. I had noticed a sign for the fish hatchery on the drive there, and thought a tour might be fun. So, I checked out of the hotel around 10 am and drove the 20 km to the hatchery. Of course, the kids (who has slept very poorly) fell asleep on the drive. So, I let them sleep and read a book while they slept in the parking lot of the hatchery. After about an hour, they woke up and were refreshed and ready to explore.

The hatchery supplies trout and wall-eye to the thousands of land locked lakes of Alberta. They harvest the eggs in the wild, and bring them to their facility to grow. The lady who gave the tour was very knowledgeable. She said that they have a 60% survival rate for their eggs compared to about 1% in the wild. She also said that for every dollar spent by the province on the hatchery, $35 is made in sport fishing related activities, equipment and licenses.

Some of the Kindergarten classes that had visited over the years sent really neat thank-you crafts. One was a mobile of fish made from 2 CD's and some paper. Another used 1 Ltr containers that they painted on the inside and cut out tails from the ends. I took some pics because I thought they would be fun crafts to try.

When we visited, all the eggs had hatched and the last of the baby fish were maturing. We were encouraged to handle some of the fish. Evelyn loved to catch the smallest ones in a little net. We also got to feed some of the bigger fish and touch some mature Rainbow trout.

Evelyn has been reading "A Fish out of Water" with us and called the baby fish "Otto" like the fish in the book. When we fed the fish, she was bit concerned that we feed them 'a little, but not a lot' so they would not grow and grow and grow like 'Otto' does. It was pretty cute.

After the Hatchery, we had a late lunch, shopped a bit, then picked up Ryan and drove to the Edmonton Airport (about 3 - 3 1/2 hrs away) to pick up Ryan's sister Dawne.