Morehead’s very own Cave Run Lake is home to a variety of fish species indigenous to Kentucky. This is thanks, in no small part, to the nearby hatchery. The Minor E. Clark Fish Hatchery provides the Commonwealth’s waters with fish from the Land Between the Lakes to the Appalachian Mountains.
Located just beyond the tailwaters of Cave Run Lake, the Minor E. Clark Fish Hatchery is one of the nation’s largest warm-water spawning facilities. Rod Middleton is the manager at the facility. He said this spring the hatchery has produced tens-of-thousands of Kentucky’s walleye and muskellunge. This comes as the warmer weather makes for more favorable fishing conditions.
Middleton said the process of breeding, raising and releasing fish into the wild is a long one that requires a lot of work and attention from all employees at the facility.
“We’re in the spawning season now. Once we get further along, we’ll stock fry in our ponds and those will grow out to fingerlings,” he said. “Once we stock the fry, we’ll harvest the fingerlings out of the ponds, and then that’s when we’ll bring them in. We’ll process those fish, we’ll sample count them, weigh them out, and prepare them to be stocked out to lakes and streams the next day.”
After being hatched, thousands of small fish - or fry - are moved to the dozens of single-acre ponds across the property. These ponds are the temporary home of the young fingerlings until they are large enough to be transported. Middleton adds the 100 ponds at the facility hold some of the state’s most prized species of sporting fish like walleye.
“About 4.5 to 5.5 days after the eggs have hatched, we’ll stock out the fry. With those we stock about 120,000 per acre pond,” said Middleton. “With muskie, we actually stock them at about 11,500 per acre.”
He added, once the fish are developed enough to be transported, they travel far and wide. Some species are stocked as far as 300 miles away while others stay local.
“We stock stripers in the tailwaters of Kentucky Lake and Barkley Lake, so we go that far west. We stock walleye and muskie both in Green River Lake. We stock stripers in Lake Cumberland which is in central Kentucky, and I think there’s about nine or ten lakes that we stock walleye in,” said Middleton.
Many of the hatchery’s fish stay in Rowan County making Cave Run Lake a hotspot for fish of all varieties. As the weather continues to warm, more and more boats can be seen on the water. Long-time angler and former president of a prominent Kentucky fishing club, Scott Smalley, has always enjoyed fishing the waters of Cave Run Lake.
“I’ve fished Cave Run for probably 30 years, mostly for muskie for about 25 years. Anyway, we’re going to go out go out and probably fish for muskie and crappie,” said Mr. Smalley.
He believes the work the hatchery does greatly benefits the lake and the surrounding area.
“If you get involved with the hatchery and you go down there and witness what these guys do, they do a very efficient job with what they’ve got to work with,” added Smalley.
Cave Run Lake features 22 access sites across Rowan, Bath, Morgan and Menifee counties. More information about fishing and associated regulations can be found at the Kentucky Department of Fish and Wildlife Resources.