Willow Beach National Fish Hatchery

The Willow Beach National Fish Hatchery, on the Arizona bank of the Colorado River, eleven miles below Hoover Dam, has produced more than one million pounds of Rainbow trout since it began operations in March, 1962. Ninety-five percent of these fish have been stocked into the Lower Colorado River, where they have played an important part in producing the fine trophy trout fishery in Lake Mohave. Colorado River water, released from Hoover Dam, is drawn from 250 feet below the surface of Lake Mead. This largest national fish hatchery in the Southwest uses 10,000 gallons per minute. Water temperature varies only one or two degrees from the 55-degree average.

Hatchery Manager Oliver Hawkins and Assistant Manager George Mapes supervise operations on this Bureau of Sport Fisheries and Wildlife facility, which employs ten people full time in the big job of feeding 300,000 pounds of trout feed each year to the millions of Rainbows in the raceways. It takes approximately .4 pound of food to grow a trout to the eight-inch length and approximately .5 to grow a nine-inch trout. Once stocked in the Colorado River, however, growth may be more rapid. Tagging and fin clipping experiments carried on by the Arizona and Nevada Game and Fish Departments have proved that a Willow Beach Rainbow can grow from nine inches to twenty-four inches in just thirteen months. Impressive trout photographs at the Willow Beach Marina are proof that Lake Mohave trout grow to giant size.

The Willow Beach Hatchery was built by the Bureau of Sport Fisheries and Wildlife with the support of the states of Arizona and Nevada to meet the greatly increased need for nineand ten-inch trout brought about by formation of the reservoirs on the Lower Colorado. When trying to meet a fish-stocking schedule, which calls for plant-ing throughout the year, Willow Beach National Fish Hatchery ran into an unusual problem. Although the depths temperature of the lakes were 55 degrees (considered near perfect for Rainbow trout) summer sunlight often raised surface temperatures to the point where trout could not live. A second problem was raised by the lack of access roads leading into the steep-walled canyon of Lake Mohave.Both problems were solved by the construction of a huge stocking barge. This barge forty feet long and sixteen feet wide can carry as much as 3,000 pounds of Rainbow trout. It also carries a supply of ice used to lower water temperatures in the fish holding tanks. Fish are released through a twenty-foot-long discharge pipe which reaches down through the warm water to allow release of the trout into the cold water below. This unique barge has enabled Willow Beach to stock more than one ton of larger size trout per week for the past four years.

Although Willow Beach National Fish Hatchery has an obliga-tion to the entire Colorado River between the tailwaters of Glen Canyon and Needles, California, Lake Mohave is the most important target for Willow Beach fish.

Certainly ninety percent of the chunky, full-bodied Rainbow taken by anglers are Lake Mohave trout and could proudly wear the label: "Product of Willow Beach National Fish Hatchery."