During the summer months the small outdoor raceways contain stocked, catchable rainbow trout averaging 8-10 inches in length. The fish are supplied by the Nampa Fish Hatchery. The large raceways are used year-round to rear salmon smolts.
Outside smolt rearing consists of 12 fry raceways each with 750 cubic ft of rearing space and 28 production raceways each with 2,700 cubic ft of rearing space. Each production raceway has a capacity to raise 100,000 chinook to smolt stage for a total capacity of 2.8 million fish. These production raceways are serial reuse that flow from an upper raceway to a lower one.
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The Sawtooth hatchery makes every effort to recreate natural conditions for the smolts in order to reduce stress while in the raceways, as well as improve survivability when they are released to the wild (figure1).
Innovations include sprinkling of the water surface, passing currents through raceway ponds, colored and patterned bottoms (to mimic natural river bottoms, figure2 & 3) and inclusion of deadwood and other types of cover in the raceway waters (figure 4).Written and compiled by Jacqueline Harvey 1999.