Today when I was visiting the fish hatchery at Lake Mendocino to photograph Western Bluebirds they had a delivery of seven thousand fish. The delivery was from the Warm Springs Fish Hatchery below Lake Sonoma. The fish being delivered were originally from the Russian River below Lake Mendocino but they were trucked down to the Warm springs Hatchery to be raised. When they are large enough they are trucked back up to the hatchery at Mendocino so that they can imprint on the river's water during the final stage before they are released. Scientist believe this imprinting makes the fish more likely to return to the Russian river to spawn as their home stream.
The truck carried special tubes or piping that they assembled to attach to the back of the truck so they could dump the fish into a concrete raceway at the hatchery. There was a waterfall of fish and water into the raceway from the pipe when they opened the valve on the back of the truck.
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