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Hundreds of people visited the St. Marys State Fish Hatchery open house on Saturday to get an up close look at the breeding and hatching process of local fish.
ST. MARYS - Despite the cloudy skies and slight drizzle of rain, locals came out in droves Saturday morning to the St. Marys Fish Hatchery annual open house.
Located on 155 acres on the eastern shore of Grand Lake, the St. Marys Fish Hatchery, at 1735 Feeder Road, is one of six state fish hatcheries operated by the ODNR Department of Wildlife. The other state hatcheries are in Hebron, Senecaville, London, Castalia and Latham.
The local hatchery produces walleye, saugeye, yellow perch, fingerlings, channel catfish and blue catfish, a hatchery fact sheet states. The walleye, saugeye and yellow perch fry and fingerlings are produced to stock reservoirs statewide each spring. The channel catfish are produced and stocked as catchables, yearlings or fingerlings. Blue catfish fry are received from the Hebron State Fish Hatchery, grown out to advanced fingerlings and stocked in the fall.
In 2024, the five full-time St. Marys staff members produced 9.8 million saugeye fry and 4.1 million saugeye fingerling; 4.9 walleye fry and 2.2 walleye fingerling; 2.1 million yellow perch and 1.1 million yellow perch fingerling; 151,733 advanced blue catfish fingerlings; and 4,599 channel catfish catchables.
A fry is a young fish that hatch from eggs, usually less than a week old; and a fingerling is a fish that is still developing into an adult, but is beyond the fry stage.
A microscopic view of fish eggs. Hundreds of people visited the St. Marys State Fish Hatchery open house on Saturday to get an up close look at the breeding and hatching process of local fish.
Incubation jars containing saugeye and walleye fish eggs. Hundreds of people visited the St. Marys State Fish Hatchery open house on Saturday to get an up close look at the breeding and hatching process of local fish.
Attendees on Saturday were able to view saugeye, walleye and yellow perch (eggs, hatchlings, and fry) in the holding house tanks, as well as shoot at the archery trailer and BB gun range.
State fish biologists were also in attendance for questions with several displays of fish sampling equipment.
The St. Marys hatchery has 26 ponds containing a total of 43 water acres, superintendent Jay Williams said.
The crew starts production just after the ice has fully melted off the water, in about the third week of March, he said.
"That's when yellow perk production starts. So as soon as ice is off, then we get into yellow perch. Soon after that, then we get involved in collecting walleye and saugeye eggs from district personnel," Williams said.
The state is divided into five districts, and each district has their own office with biologists, Williams explained.
"They know how many fish (are in each lake)," he said. "You know, not exact, but through surveys and sampling, they can tell you right down the fish that are in there, and then they can also let you let us know if that body of water needs more yellow perch."
Just after the first of the year, the hatchery has a meeting with state biologists, who then give their fish requests for the year.
St. Marys State Fish Hatchery Superintendent Jay Williams speaks with two visitors at the open house on Saturday afternoon. Hundreds of people visited the hatchery open house to get an up close look at the breeding and hatching process of local fish.
"And then we produce them," Williams said. "During the year, believe it or not, the fish that we have here, we raise them up to 2 inches long. And then we stock them out. But that process takes us up to halfway through June."
Then Williams and his team drain all the water out of the ponds, and get into a new crop of blue catfish.
"And then we really pour the feed to them because we need to get them as big as we can, as fast as we can by October," he said. "We really throw it to them as much as they want to eat. We're just going to keep throwing it to them. We get them up to about 6 to 8 inches by October."
The production season ends around the first week of November, and then for the rest of the year the crew works on mostly maintenance, and by January, they start all over again.
Williams said the St. Marys hatchery stocks hundreds of Ohio lakes a year, multiple times.
A little boy points at a fish swimming. Hundreds of people visited the St. Marys State Fish Hatchery open house on Saturday to get an up close look at the breeding and hatching process of local fish.
The hatchery opened in 1913 and was originally operated by the Western Ohio Fish and Game Association and then transferred to the Ohio Division of Conservation, predecessor of Ohio Department of Natural Resources Division of Wildlife, in 1936, according to ODNR.
The area hatchery was recently renovated in 2018 for a production building, two new wells, new sand filters, redesigned raceways and jar batteries, and pump and sluice gate upgrades, the fact sheet states. Funding was provided, in part, by the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative.
Other activities available at the facility include an unsupervised archery range open daily, sunrise to sunset with no permit needed; a controlled waterfowl hunting area; self-guided tours with guided tours available by appointment; and wildlife viewing and photography on the westside of the property ditch.
