The 110-year-old Fish Hatchery in Warrensburg, county-owned and operated since 1982, is not only a public park and educational facility, drawing groups throughout the year to see firsthand how fish are raised, but an essential piece of the county’s multi-million-dollar recreational economy.
“People come to the Schroon and the Hudson, to our other streams and ponds, to fish; the demand for sport fishing opportunities is immense,” said Dean Moore, Warren County’s Director of Parks and Recreation. “The Fish Hatchery plays a role in maintaining populations which might otherwise disappear. It helps keep the sport alive.”
According to the Planning Department’s Ethan Gaddy, fishing may be responsible, directly or indirectly, for as many as 150 to 250 jobs in Warren County.
In 2023, the Hatchery’s stocking programs distributed more than 25,000 rainbow and brook trout to over thirty sites throughout the county. It also reared landlocked salmon for the state’s programs, which stocked more than 115,000 fish in Warren County in 2022, the last year for which statistics were available.
It is one of only a few hatcheries in New York State to raise a strain of heritage brook trout, which are repopulating ponds and lakes that were devastated by acid rain. Brooktrout Lake, where brook trout flourished in the 1930s but had vanished by 1984, is one of them. In 2005, the DEC stocked the lake with 24 adult brook trout and 1,500 fingerlings, all from the Warrensburg fish hatchery. The results are promising, said scientists from RPI’s Darrin Fresh Water Institute in Bolton Landing.
According to Hatchery Manager Jeff Inglee, stocking programs become especially important when native populations of wild fish can no longer sustain themselves, whether because of habitat loss or climate change, which may raise the temperatures required by cold water fish.
Reasons enough for Warren County’s Board of Supervisors to take a keen interest in the Fish Hatchery.
David Nelson, a member of the Planning Department’s staff, said he has heard nothing but support for a new “Warren County Fish Hatchery Master Plan,” drafted with funds from the county’s share of American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) distributions.
The Plan includes a list of projects that could be completed if grants for which the county is eligible are
received, according to a copy now circulating among the county Supervisors.
According to Hatchery Manager Inglee, the priorities include restoring the century-old, stream-fed, covered ponds where the fish are raised, as well as the roof of the hatchery, where eggs are kept. The Visitors Center would also be reconstructed and modernized.
To complete every project, as much as $1.5 million will be needed, Ethan Gaddy told a committee of Supervisors on September 26.
The Northern Border Regional Commission, which provides Federal funds for critical economic and community development projects throughout the northeast, is a likely source of those funds, said Gaddy.
“The upgrades itemized in this Master Plan will enable the Hatchery to produce the fish required by our tourism economy more efficiently and effectively,” Gaddy told the Supervisors.
