Wolf Creek National Fish Hatchery

Conserving America’s Fisheries

Who We Are:

Wolf Creek National Fish Hatchery was constructed in 1975. This is one of the most recently constructed hatcheries in the federal hatchery system. This station currently produces approximately 1,000,000 trout weighing 250,000 pounds annually. In cooperation with the Kentucky Department of Fish and Wildlife Resources, fish are stocked into over 100 different public fishing waters in the state. No private waters are stocked. The majority of the fish are stocked in waters controlled by the federal government. Wolf Creek NFH is also working toward the recovery of several endangered species, including the Relict darter, Spotfin chub and the Barrens topminnow. Visitation to the hatchery is over 100,000 annually.

In September 2006, the hatchery officially opened the Visitor/Environmental Education Center. The facility is currently the first and only center of its kind in the Southeast Region. Through state-of-the-art exhibits, classroom, indoor theater and gift shop, the center serves as a fun and engaging learning resource for all visitors, especially school children from the region. The center also offers a myriad of outreach programs and workshops (including the annual Catch a Rainbow Kids Fishing Derby, held on the first Saturday in June each year) and has launched the Biologist in Training (BiT) Program, an aquatic environmental education curriculum, which is designed for hatcheries and tailored to meet the needs of teachers in Kentucky. The facility is supported by the Friends of Wolf Creek National Fish Hatchery, Inc. and a strong volunteer staff.

What We Do:

This is a National Fish Hatchery, which is administered by the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service and is supported by your Federal tax dollars. Fish raised on Federal hatcheries are stocked in public waters to support Federal fishery responsibilities mandated by law. These include fish for mitigation where, for example, man-made dams have altered a stream’s natural reproductive capability; to recover threatened or endangered populations; to restore interjurisdictional fish populations, or to support depleted recreational fish populations in Federal and state waters.

Over a century ago, it was recognized that conservation measures were necessary to maintain good fishing in our public waters. Fishing has always been one of America’s leading forms of outdoor recreation. The primary responsibility of the Wolf Creek National Fish Hatchery is to raise rainbow, brown, and brook trout, which will help preserve this tradition for present as well as future generations of Americans.

Construction of a dam, regardless of its type, alters the entire environment within a river. The first and most obvious change takes place when the reservoir fills, but many changes may also take place below the dam. Some of them might be subtle, and others, like those in the Cumberland tailwaters, might be quite drastic.

Wolf Creek Dam produced a large, deep reservoir in which the water stratifies into temperature layers during the summer and fall months. The water released into the Cumberland River comes from a deep, cool layer. It caused a loss of the original warm water fish habitat and replaced in with the present cold tailwater.

How We Do It:

Spawning operations are not conducted at this station. However, Federal hatcheries in Tennessee, West Virginia, Wyoming, and Montana hold adult trout (broodstock) which are spawned artificially. After the eggs are taken and fertilized, they are held at the station until they develop to the eyed egg stage. Then the eggs are shipped overnight to production hatcheries like Wolf Creek National Fish Hatchery to hatch.When the station receives eggs, they are disinfected to prevent spread of fish diseases. They are counted using volume metric displacement and then placed in the hatching jars.

Eggs hatch approximately 10 to 14 days after they are placed in the hatching jars. The fry are then transferred to the rearing tanks where they remain another 10 to 14 days until they absorb their yolk sacs. As the yolk sacs are absorbed, the fry swim to the water surface and are fed specially formulated feed hourly. When the young fry reach approximately 2 inches, they are called fingerlings. When the fingerlings grow 2-3 inches, they are moved to the outside raceways where the larger fish are kept.