Luther Cash, a fisheries technician at Montebello, has been raising and “slinging” trout for nearly 30 years.
A netful of brook trout. The state fish hatcher at Montebello releases about 128,000 “catchable” brook, rainbow, and brown trout a year.
had voice mail, a message I wanted to hear. “Luther Cash, Montebello Fish Hatchery. Need to set up a time to help sling some fish.”
I’d caught plenty of fish in my life, but had never put any into a stream. I had never slung a fish. A few weeks later I was headed to the state fish hatchery at Montebello, a 77-yearold facility near the crest of a mountain in Nelson County. Luther said we would sling about 1,300 brook trout that day.
It was mid-March, about seven in the morning, and the air was unseasonably warm. The sun burned through a light haze as central Virginia displayed signs of early spring — greening in the fields, the smell of turned dirt and manure. I felt as excited about the day as if I were going fishing.
By the time I got to the hatchery, Luther and other fisheries technicians were nearly done loading the truck.
The way they work is pretty simple. Luther parks the truck next to a section of raceway that contains harvestable trout, meaning stocking size — nine-inches or longer. A man in waders steps into the water, which is less than knee deep, and walks toward the fish with a screen forcing the fish to flee toward another screen already in position. Once the fish are balled up the guy gets in with the trapped fish and starts scooping them into a long-handled net. He hands it up to Luther, who’s standing on a steel platform on the side of the truck. Luther tilts the lip of the net to the edge of a holding tank and starts counting silently as the fish flop in. His lips move slightly. Today’s fish will go into the north fork and main stem of the Piney River in nearby Amherst County.
During the course of a year, Luther and his co-workers, L.E. Humphreys and Darren Poole, and hatchery superintendent Thom Teears, raise, transport and release about 128,000 “catchable” brook, rainbow and brown trout, plus 8,000 or so fingerlings.
Luther has lived all of his 54 years within walking distance of the hatchery. He’s raised trout there for nearly thirty years now. His father worked at the hatchery too, and his grandfather built the original wooden raceways. Today’s raceways — thirty-three of them — are concrete. The old wooden ones have been taken over by nature, but if you go back into the woods you can see their decaying remains.
Luther invited me to climb up onto the truck and look into the four 250-gallon tanks. I was amazed at the nice size and healthy appearance of the trout he’d just put in. The staff feeds the fish a highprotein diet that maximizes growth. Wild brook trout in Virginia need about four years, nearly their full life span, to grow nine-inches. But these pampered hatchery fish reach that length in less than two years.
“You actually counted thirteen-hundred fish?” I asked.
“Yep, give or take.”
As we pulled out of the hatchery, fishermen in three vehicles were lined up on the side of the road waiting to follow.
The Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries doesn’t publicize in advance its weekly stocking schedule. Ideally the fish would be released in a stream or lake without fanfare and allowed to settle in for a day or two before being bombarded by fishermen with brightly-colored synthetic baits and canned corn and grubs. In practicality, the fishermen want to catch the trout the moment they’re released. And often they do. Bait-flinging trout fishermen use a well-developed intelligence network of lookouts and scouts and plenty of rumor to discern the weekly stocking schedule. Some hang out near the hatchery just waiting to see a truck get loaded. They draw up hypothetical schedules based on the dates of previous stockings and can predict with amazing accuracy when and where a stocking will take place. If anybody sees a hint of activity at the hatchery, they get on the cell phone and let their friends know. Word spreads fast and the fishermen often make it to the release site before the stocking truck does.
On our eastward drive down the twisting mountain road toward the river all three vehicles stayed close behind. We entered a small valley and headed southward, the mountains looming in the mist. Two more vehicles picked up our trail. We drove a two-lane road along some foothills and then started up the mountain toward the river. Luther and L.E. spoke gently of their love of the land.
The Piney River is a beautiful stair-step stream on the eastern slope of the Blue Ridge. Its clear waters cascade through heavy forest in a rapid descent toward the Piedmont. A paved road parallels the main stem going up the mountain then becomes gravel higher up along the north fork. As we drove we saw cars and trucks parked all along the road, and fishermen sitting in their vehicles or standing beside them. More fishermen were down the bank beside the stream staring up at us, rods in hand, waiting.
I often fish alone for wild naturally-reproducing brook trout high up the mountains where few people fish. I dislike elbow- to-elbow fishing. But here, dozens of fishermen were waiting for their catch to be delivered to them. It looked a lot like catching fish from an aquarium.
The entire trout hatchery and stocking operation in Virginia is paid for by license revenues, most of it from the $18 annual trout permit anglers must buy to fish for trout in “Designated Stocked Trout Waters” and in “Delayed Harvest Waters.” About 1.1 to 1.3 million “catchable” brook, rainbow and brown trout — fish that are big enough to hook and keep — are raised and released from Virginia’s five coldwater hatcheries each year. Most of them will be caught, killed and eaten within a week or two after release. They will be stocked during the cool months of October to May in waters that cannot support a sizable naturally sustainable population of trout. The state also releases more than 270,000 fingerlings in a year, many of which will grow to catchable size within a couple of years after release.
