The origins of the McKenzie River’s hatchery trout, and how it makes them different from the wild, native fish.

The Mckenzie River’s stocked trout start as eggs at the Roaring River Hatchery in the mid-Willamette valley. The eggs are transferred to McKenzie Hatchery, just downstream from Leaburg, which raises them into fingerling trout. They are transferred to Leaburg Hatchery in late summer, where they grow over the winter. The fish are stocked in the McKenzie River the next spring and summer.

The story behind the McKenzie’s stocked fish goes back to the late 19th century. In his book An Entirely Synthetic Fish, Anders Halverson writes that the proliferation of rainbow trout started on the McCloud River in northern California, when a sportsmen’s club sought to increase the number of fish in the McCloud by building the first hatchery in the United States. They used a group of wild McCloud River rainbow trout to start the hatchery in 1877. Then, with the aid of the trans-continental railroad, the McCloud hatchery shipped fish to other rivers — first to the United States east coast, then all over the world.

Native to rivers of the Pacific Rim, rainbow trout can be found anywhere from Central America to Alaska. Rainbow trout found elsewhere, such as in Pennsylvania and Colorado, despite being Colorado’s state fish until the 1990’s, didn’t evolve there. Halverson writes that if an angler catches a rainbow trout outside of its native range, it’s likely a descendent of one of the fish captured from the McCloud more than a century ago.

The vast majority of stocked rainbows in the McKenzie — and in all Willamette Valley streams — also came from the McCloud. In 2021, Leaburg hatchery produced 200,000 rainbow trout from the Cape Cod stock for streams and reservoirs in the Willamette Valley. The ancestors of these fish originated in the McCloud River in 1882, and were transferred to a Massachusetts hatchery before being shipped to Spokane in the 1940s. Then, in 1971, the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife (ODFW) brought Cape Cod stock eggs from Spokane to the Roaring River Hatchery, where broodstock for Willamette Valley streams was created.

The state’s hatchery management plan cites several reasons why ODFW chose this stock, including that they tend to remain where they are planted, and “most significantly, they seem to have a high capture rate by anglers.”

These fish are born to be mild and easy to catch. Because of their easy upbringing, they haven’t learned to fight for survival. Most hatchery fish, according to Withalm, can’t even survive the winter in the river. Humans have mastered the art of artificial propagation and we have produced fish under total human control, created solely to serve the needs of anglers.