New Park Service pond to be stocked by Game and Fish

The newly rehabilitated pond at the Bighorn Canyon Cal S. Taggart Visitor Center in Lovell will soon receive a supply of trout, a Wyoming Game and Fish biologist confirmed this week.

Sam Hochhalter, Game and Fish Cody Region fisheries supervisor, said “catchable” trout of six to eight inches in length will be stocked in the pond around the first of June, and the pond will be re-stocked as needed.

The pond was drained and rehabilitated by Bairco Construction of Lovell, which enhanced a National Park Service project to refurbish the pond and replace the liner, which was installed 50 years ago when the pond was created as a reflecting pond for the then solar-powered visitor center.

Bairco owner/operator Devin Bair decided to enhance the project by digging it deeper and installing fish habitat friendly devices like tree roots and concrete blocks for fish to hide in and rows of rock along the banks as places for fish to lay eggs. The pond was drained late last fall, and after the work was completed, the pond was refilled in mid to late March. An aeriation system was also planned.

Whether fish will spawn in the pond or not, the Game and Fish is committed to re-stocking the pond four to six times a year, Hochhalter said, part of the agency’s ongoing efforts to stock catchable fish in public access waters.

“We have no expectation that the fish will be sustainable,” he said. “The fish are unlikely to naturally reproduce. But we will stock the pond four to six times a year from spring to fall with several hundred catchable size trout. That’s the approach we typically take for community fishing ponds.”

It typically takes a new pond a year to produce enough food supply to sustain fish, and the visitor center pond was just filled in March, Hochhalter noted.

“When you establish a brand-new pond, there is no natural food supply,” he said. “There will be a handful of bugs in the first few days, but it’s best to wait an entire calendar year. We don’t have a year, but we’ll give it several months and we’ll start to see algae grow. Then a week or a handful of days before the free kids fishing day – June 6 – we’ll do the first round of stocking.”

The likely fish to be stocked are rainbow trout, which Hochhalter said are generally the easiest to catch, adding, “We’ll see what the pond shapes up to be.”

If the pond water stays cool enough, trout will continue to be stocked, and if the water warms to a certain extent in the mid to late summer, reaching the upper 70s, the Game and Fish may opt for bluegill or largemouth bass, Hochhalter said. But since the pond is fed by ground water, with water for irrigation of the surrounding grass pulled from the pond and replaced by cooler water from below, he expects the trout to do well.

If, indeed, the trout thrive, the Game and Fish will also stock a small number of brood cull fish 14 to 18 inches long for egg production, Hochhalter said. Fish will be supplied by the Tillett Springs Rearing Station northeast of Lovell.

Hochhalter said he’s excited about the visitor center pond project, noting that developing a public fishing pond for Lovell has been on the agency’s radar for many years.