Spooner, Wisconsin is home to one of the largest musky hatcheries in the world
It's one of the largest musky hatcheries in the entire world.
John Lauritsen shows us how the Spooner hatchery keeps fish healthy and anglers happy.
"How big is fishing to the state of Wisconsin?" asked John Lauritsen.
"Oh, it's absolutely huge," said Ruth King, a Natural Resources Educator.
Walleye openers are just a few weeks away in Wisconsin and Minnesota. That means you'll see more lines in the lakes, and more fish in the hatchery.
"We have the capacity to raise a lot of fish here at the hatchery," said King.
King is talking about thousands upon thousands of little walleyes and muskies.
As the Governor Thompson Hatchery celebrates three decades in operation, they're getting ready for another season of raising fish. But first, they have to catch them.
Not with bait, but with nets.
"Tedious. It takes a long time to fix these nets," said Ben Oldenburg, Fish Technician.
The nets capture spawning fish for their eggs. They are fertilized in the lake and then taken back to the hatchery, disinfected, and put in jars where they hatch into holding tanks.
"They'll spend a couple of days in the tanks and then we spend all summer feeding them in our ponds out back," said King.
There are 46 rearing ponds at the hatchery. In September, the fish are taken out of the tanks and relocated to lakes and rivers across Northwest Wisconsin.
"If you were to draw a line from Hudson to Eau Claire and up to Ironwood, Michigan, that's roughly the geographic area we cover," said King.
The entire operation gets support from a pretty unique group.
"Friends Into Spooner Hatchery or 'FISH,'" said Larry Damann.
Damann is a FISH board member.
"They can see through the murals on the wall the story of how the hatchery works," said Damann.
Damann takes guests to the visitor center which has its own fish tales to tell. His group is known for promoting conservation— including their "Adopt a Musky" program where the fish are tagged, and when caught, people can learn where they've been and how much they've grown.
"Even guys who fish will come here and learn a lot about things they didn't know about their sport," said Damann.
When it comes to trophy fish the goal here isn't to reel them in, but to raise them. Creating new generations of fish, and hopefully new generations of anglers.
"I highly recommend stopping anywhere around the fishing opener. We almost always have something to see," said King.
The hatchery and visitor's center are open Monday through Friday.
The Wisconsin DNR is also turning the old 1914 hatchery on site into a walk-through museum that will be open to the public.