Manchester Fish Hatchery gets help from its friends

Friends of Manchester Fish Hatchery form, complete first project

The Manchester Fish Hatchery is getting by with a little help from its friends. Last year the Friends of Manchester Fish Hatchery formed to support the fish hatchery located 4 miles southeast of Manchester.

For the last 46 years, the hatchery has been run by the state of Iowa functioning as Iowa’s trout brood stock station where trout are spawned, incubated and hatched each year to produce more than 600,000 fish for stocking in Iowa waters.

But the hatchery is actually more than a hundred years old, having produced fish by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service at the facility as early as the 1890s. In 1976 the operation was given to the State of Iowa via a land swap.

Sitting on the Friends of the Manchester Fish Hatchery board of directors are: John Zietlow, president; Lori Scovel, vice president; Jack Klaus, treasurer; Amy Steger, secretary; and Pete Lilja, director at large. Dan Rosauer, biologist with Iowa Department of Natural Resources, serves as a non-voting ex officio member, and as liaison between the volunteer group and the hatchery.

“The Friends group is a great way for the DNR to partner with members of the community and improve the experience of visitors at the Manchester Fish Hatchery,” says Rosauer in a news release. “The partnership allows for fisheries staff to focus more on managing and augmenting fish populations while improving facilities and outreach.”

With the help of the Friends of Decorah Fish Hatchery and Manchester hatchery staff, the local group’s first order of business was to secure and install coin-operated machines to dispense fish food for visitors — and more importantly — generate funds for projects.

This year the group was able to replace the observation deck. The old deck, which was showing deterioration from the elements, was removed and redone with new materials, ready by Labor Day weekend. For safety, horizontal supports were replaced with vertical balusters and a ramp was added.

The goals of the Friends of the Manchester Fish Hatchery are simple: maintain the fish feeders for people to purchase feed and give to the fish at the hatchery; determine hatchery needs and use the funds to improve public interactions at the hatchery; and educate the public about natural resources focusing on the Manchester Fish Hatchery.

The hatchery grounds are open to the public from sunrise to sunset daily and self-guided tours are available around the exterior raceways. Office hours are by appointment only.

For more about Manchester’s hatchery, and other hatcheries around the state, visit www.iowadnr.gov/About-DNR/DNR-Staff-Offices/Fish-Hatcheries. To reach the friends group, email manchesterhatcheryfriends@gmail.com. More information can by found about the group on its new Facebook page and website: www.limestonebluffsrcd.org/friendsmanchesterhatchery