Trout Fishing Hatchery Kokernag

The Department have both Trout Hatcheries and Carp Hatcheries in different parts of the State. These Hatcheries are used for breeding and a high quality seed is produced by them. This seed is further distributed to The departmental’s rearing units all over the State and to the private fish farmers. This quality seed is also used for srocking in all the water bodies of the State.

In the Indian Himalayas the cultivation of fish contributes little to the overall freshwater fish production. Virtually every facility created for fish cultivation in the Indian Himalayas produces fish for stocking streams and lakes primarily to meet the requirements of sport fishing. Commercial fishery is also dependent to some extent on the stocking of lakes and reservoirs with fry and fingerlings. While for a number of years fish hatcheries in the Himalayas have been raising eyed-eggs, fry and fingerlings of brown and rainbow trout, and fry and fingerlings of common carp for stocking, only recently have some hatcheries started producing seed for stocking the indigenous mahseers and schizothoracines. To meet the ever-increasing demands of angling, subsistence and commercial fisheries, there has been a need for modernisation of some hatcheries, as past neglect has resulted in a decline in seed production. Some hatcheries have had to be abandoned. The degradation of hatcheries took place especially where water quality deteriorated and the silt load in streams increased. This chapter discusses the farming of coldwater exotic and indigenous fish and the current developmental activities which can be considered as a turning point in coldwater fisheries of the Indian Himalayas.
Coldwater aquaculture in the Indian Himalayas has been closely associated with the introduction of exotic trouts and common carp. The lack of fast-growing indigenous fish in the Himalayas motivated the British administrators in India to transplant exotic species, such as trout and other salmonids, from Europe to meet their need for recreational fishing. The fate of transplanted coldwater species is well documented, and more recently it has been summarised by Sehgal (1989).

At the beginning of the 1990s farming of trout was being carried out on several fish farms in Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Arunachal Pradesh and Sikkim. The siting of these aquaculture facilities was based on the availability of water in required quantity and quality, i.e. from rheocrene springs and snow-melt/glacier-fed streams.
Natural spawning and the time for egg stripping of brown and rainbow trout is related to the changing of the photoperiod. In Kashmir brown trout attains full maturity in mid-November to mid-December in farms receiving snow/glacier-melt water. In spring-fed farms it matures in December-January. Rainbow trout matures in mid-February to March. The average number of eggs per kilogram of female body weight varies between 1234 and 1342 in brown trout and 1649 to 1850 in rainbow trout. Research on Kashmir farms shows that the number of eggs can be enhanced by up to 14% if broodstock is kept in good condition. This includes separation of males from females three months prior to egg stripping, and feeding them a wet diet consisting of partially boiled fish meat balls made from common carp and schizothoracines in a ratio of 1:1. Such broodstock has a higher number of eggs (1417 to 1542), but the eggs are also of better quality, giving 89.2% survival from green egg to swim-up fry as against 25% in conventional practice.

(source:jktourism.org)