The Fish Culture Tradition

For almost 100 years, the Flathead Lake Salmon Hatchery near Somers, Montana (just southwest of Glacier National Park) has been doing things the old fashioned way: collecting eggs from wild kokanee salmon and maintaining as pure a strain of fish as can be found anywhere. “The troughs and baskets holding fingerling kokanee salmon are exactly the same, and the incubation methods basically are as well. The manager, now Mark Kornick, still lives in a nearby bungalow also built in 1912. [Brian] Strohschein, who has worked at the hatchery for 24 years, is proud to still collect eggs from the wild, as opposed to using eggs from domesticated fish ‘brewed in ponds or concrete raceways.'” Article by the Associated Press.