Norm Hines’ Last Day at the Fish Hatchery

By John McEvoy

Bounding through the doorway like an excited schoolboy out for recess, Norm Hines greeted me with a smile and a wave. “Come on in! We’re just about to cut the cake!”

After 36 years of faithful service in U.S. government national fish hatcheries, this was Hines’ last day in Hotchkiss, and an eventful one at that.

I’d met Norm by accident (or providence) the previous week during one of my frequent, late-afternoon photographic excursions when I stumbled across the Hotchkiss National Fish Hatchery.

Rounding a corner on Rogers Mesa after crossing the railroad tracks, the road abruptly dipped downward toward the North Fork of the Gunnison River with the hatchery nestled conveniently along its banks.

Norm was outside as I pulled up. “Mind if I wander around and make some photos of the hatchery?”

“Not at all,” he said, “In fact, the fish are really jumping right now down at the ponds. I’ll take you down there.”

The late afternoon sun was unusually warm as we walked alongside the holding ponds and the direction of the light revealed what seemed like curtains of winged insects hanging in the air above the water. The gurgling of the freshwater spring that feeds the ponds and the splashing of literally thousands of trout tails dancing on the surface left me speechless.

“These midges started hatching a few days ago,” said Norm, as all around us four and five inch trout rose eagerly to the occasion.

“Look over there!” he said, pointing to a large bird approaching overhead. “It’s a blue heron coming in for dinner.”

“Bet a big bird like that eats a lot of fish,” I said.

“Between them and the raccoons, we do lose a lot of fish, but we raise 2 million fish here each year. Inside there are 600,000 fingerlings ready to be transferred to the runways outside, and next week, a half million more eggs arrive. That’s something you might want to come back for.”

“How long will it be before these fish here in the ponds will get taken out to stock the rivers and lakes?”

“Next spring,” Norm replied. “By then they’ll be 8-10 inches long and ready to go to Collbran, Crawford and Ridgeway reservoirs. We control the growth of the fish by the temperature of the water and how much we feed them. They could grow an inch a month if we wanted, but we don’t. The water here is about 50 degrees, which is just right for the cold-water fish like trout and salmon. We just raise trout here. Gunnison (hatchery) raises the salmon.”

For some reason, I was compelled to ask Norm a silly question. “Do you fish?”

“A year ago me, my eldest son and grandson caught 100 pounds of walleye bass, channel catfish and bluegill in an evening and a morning. I’d say we do a lot of fishing” he smiled.

“Where was this at?”

“Stockton Reservoir in Missouri. That’s where we fish in summer. In winter we concentrate on fishing in Oklahoma where we catch lots of crappie.”

“What do those look like, a perch?”

“Yes. There are black crappie and white crappie. You filet them out, roll them in egg and cracker crumbs and then fry them in hot fat. That’s some of the best fish!”

“Sounds like you have fished all over the country.”

“Oh yes,” said Norm. “My wife was telling me the other day that she has moved with me 25 times in the last 36 years that I have worked for the government. This is a national fish hatchery and there are 75 in the United States. I’ve worked in ten other states besides Colorado because they move you around for training. I’ve worked at warm-water hatcheries with bass, bluegill and catfish, cool-water hatcheries with small-mouth bass, walleye and northern pike, and cold-water with trout and salmon. Next week I retire and we are moving back to Missouri- the Ozarks. That’s where the kids and grandkids are.”

“Back in Missouri I was hatchery manager and the hatchery was located in the center of town like a city park. One of the teachers there brought a group of students every week starting in September and followed the process from eggs to ship out. The eggs and sac-fry are transparent and under a microscope, each time the heart beats you can see the blood move through the arteries. That’s good for kids to see.”

“Too bad you’re retiring,” I said. “You could offer a valuable education for the kids around here.”

“Well, I was big on it in Missouri. Around here the schools don’t have the interest that they do in Missouri. It has something to do with travel times and all that. Every year we send out 25 or 30 letters to all the schools informing them of what we have available and invite them to take a tour.”

“Sometimes we go to the classes and sometimes they come here. I’m really big on third and fourth graders because they will ask questions, they’re curious. As soon as you get to junior high and high school, you can show slides and talk to them and they won’t ask you one question. A third or fourth grader will ask so many questions you can’t answer them all. They learn more at that age than any other. They aren’t inhibited.”

“Say, you ought to come back next week when we get a shipment of eggs in. It could make for some real good pictures.”

Which brings me back to Norm’s last day.

After the cake was consumed, it was back to work. There were half of a million trout eggs to be disinfected, measured and weighed, and Norm’s last day was far from over. I could get into all of the details of what happened then but- that’s a whole other fish story.

For now, Norm had a favor to ask of me.

“All the years I have worked these hatcheries, I have always nominated myself the official keeper of the flag where I put it up and take it down each and every day. It would really mean a lot to me to have a picture of myself taking down the flag one last time.”

“This one is for you, Norm.” (Photo of Norm at the flagpole)