Outdoors Bound: Final smallmouth hatchery tally and where they will be stocked

FRONT ROYAL, Va. (WFXR) — We now know how many smallmouth bass were hatched and reared to fingerling size at the Front Royal Fish Cultural Station this year. That number is 221,741.

That is important because smallmouth bass are notoriously difficult to raise in a hatchery. While other states have failed in their efforts, the Virginia Department of Wildlife Resources (VDWR) has come up with a formula where brood fish are collected and allowed to acclimate to hatchery ponds. Nest trays, trays containing pebbles and gravel, are then introduced at spawning time. The result this year has been overwhelming success.

“One of the tools to managing our fisheries is stocking,” said Virginia Department of Wildlife Resources Fisheries Biologist Jason Hallacher. “We’re hoping to use stocking to help recover some of our ailing smallmouth population.”

While Virginia still hosts some of the best smallmouth fisheries in the United States, poor spawns on the James and Shenandoah Rivers have led to a drop in numbers. While nearly a quarter million smallmouth sounds like a lot, it is really only enough to stock selected stretches of steams or lakes to bridge the gap between poor spawns.

“Anglers will see that down the line, there will be a little bit of a dip in the population,” Hallacher said. “We’re hoping to use this as a tool to try to boost that population and keep it afloat until it can spawn naturally on its own.”

Those fish hatched at Front Royal have already been placed in Virginia streams and lakes. Here is the breakdown provided from the VDWR:

• Middle James River 60,210
• Upper James River 58,424
• South River 4,095
• South Fork Shenandoah River 6,825
• Hearthstone River 1,000
• Lake Frederick 1,299
• Lake Laura 650
• North Fork Shenandoah River 41,694
• Staunton River 24,121
• Cowpasture River 23,423

In addition to the fish raised at Front Royal, the Buller Fish Cultural Station near Marion also reared smallmouth bass this year. Nearly 65,000 were successfully raised to fingerling size there. Those smallmouth were stocked into Carvin’s Cove Reservoir, South Holston Reservoir, and Philpott Reservoir to supplement smallmouth numbers in those lakes.