MIKE BRAUN Spend a day at a Pa. state hatchery

Ever wonder where Pennsylvania gets the fish it uses to stock its lakes and rivers?
You can get a good idea about that and have some fun Saturday when the Linesville Fish Culture Station at 13300 Hartstown Road, Linesville, holds a public open house from noon to 4 p.m. The station is operated by the Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission.
The station is on the shore of the Pymatuning Reservoir Sanctuary, a 2,500-acre, no-fishing impoundment where the facility obtains its brood-stock. The sanctuary is connected to the main, 17,000-acre Pymatuning Reservoir by a spillway.
Lots of fish: A lot of fish come out of this facility and the state's 13 other hatcheries. Figures show that -- annually -- some 90 million walleye fry and fingerlings are stocked from this station alone. That's million.
And there's more than just walleye raised here. "This station is considered the state's main warm-water production facility," said Mark Sickles, the environmental education specialist at Linesville.
Sickles said the station also raises steelhead and walleye. Other fish grown there include northern pike, paddlefish, largemouth bass, muskellunge and minnows.
What are you going to see if you make the trip to the Crawford County site?
Spawn time: Well, since this is the time of year when walleye and muskellunge are spawned, you can get a glimpse of the day-to-day activities including parts of the fish culture cycle, from egg collection and fertilization to incubation to fry growth.
Visitors will see also methods used in the taking and fertilizing of musky and walleye eggs, sorting fish from trap nets, and determining the age of fish.
The center also contains a 10,000-gallon multistory viewing aquarium and an observation deck for viewing the sanctuary's propagation waters.
"There will be more than just hatchery activities," Sickles said. "We'll have representatives here from all our other PFBC departments setting up displays and having demonstrations."
Other activities: He added that other activities planned include letting visitors produce their own "fish prints" on paper or on a T-shirt (bring your own), safe boating practices, as well as demonstrations of fish filleting, electro-shocking, casting and other angling techniques.
braun@vindy.com