What would you call working a full day while standing hip-deep in freezing water during a snowy and windy day?
Nevada Department of Wildlife Conservation Aid Neil Murphy calls it a great day at the office.
"It gets pretty cold up there, and sometimes it snows or it gets windy, but the bottom line is you are spending the day at a beautiful mountain lake. It's actually a lot of fun. Plus it's exciting to see what types of fish we bring in."
Murphy is referring to the department's annual Marlette Lake fish spawn. As a brood stock lake, Marlette is a major source of trout eggs for Nevada's hatcheries. Employees annually spend several weeks up at Marlette, collecting fish eggs. This year's collection wrapped up in mid-June
"Rather than have these brood stock fish at a hatchery, we put them in a lake," said Kim Toulouse, volunteer coordinator. "It's better for the fish because it's a completely natural environment and it's much less expensive on our end as well."
Toulouse reports that each year as the fish at Marlette prepare to spawn, several employees and volunteers make the trip up to the lake.
The team sets up a spawning station on one of the creeks leading into the lake to trap fish trying to head up stream. Three to four nets are also placed at key locations on the lake in order to capture enough fish to reach their objectives for eggs. This year the state collected over 800,000 rainbow trout eggs and over 250,000 bowcutt trout eggs (mixture of a male rainbow trout and a female cutthroat trout).
Fish are separated by species and sex. The eggs are stripped and fertilized and then sent to the Mason Valley Fish Hatchery.
Toulouse also reports the amount of time spent up at Marlette is dependent on whether or not the fish collected are ready to spawn.
"Some years it might take two to three weeks. It is totally dependent on the fish. If we don't get the fish we need, we stay up there until we hit our target number."
He said that at 8,000 feet, Marlette can have some interesting weather. "It can be 75 degrees and sunny one day, and then snowing and windy the next. It doesn't change the job though, even if it's snowing you still have to pull the nets in and collect the fish. Sometimes we will all huddle together and hope the worst of it will blow over. It can get a little miserable at times."
When asked how an employee or volunteer could enjoy working in cold water and cold weather, Toulouse holds up a picture of a volunteer holding up a large and beautiful rainbow trout.
"That's why," said Toulouse. "Anglers love fish. Even when they are not catching them they just love to see all the different species, and we see some pretty nice fish up there. There are definitely worse places to be than up at Marlette collecting these quality fish for a few days. This is a widely popular event for our volunteers."
Fishing season opened at Marlette, a 5-mile walk up North Canyon from Spooner Lake, for catch and release only July 15. Anglers may only use artificial flies and lures with single, barbless hooks.
