Background

The Marion Fish Hatchery was built in the 1930s. The hatchery is located in Smyth County Virginia, 1.5 miles from the town of Marion on Highway 16. Marion Fish Hatchery is a cold water hatchery owned and operated by the Virginia Department of Wildlife Resourcess. Marion Fish Hatchery annually produces Rainbow, Brown, and Brook Trout. Most of the eggs are collected at the facility and approximately thirty percent are received from other fish hatcheries. Three million eggs are annually incubated at Marion Fish Hatchery. Seventy five percent of our eggs are diploids with the other twenty five percent being triploids. Trout fingerlings are raised in concrete raceways inside a hatchery building, until they reach a specific size, and then the fish are moved outside to production raceways. The total production of trout is around Four hundred thousand per year. Annually, the Marion Fish Hatchery stocks thirty three rivers and five lakes throughout southwest Virginia. The stocking covers ten counties in southwest Virginia. These stocking include seven kids’ fish day events throughout the stocking season.

The water supply for the Marion Fish Hatchery consists of water gravity fed through 12” cast iron pipes from four different springs and a diversion dam on Staley’s Creek. The hatchery building for the fingerlings is completely spring water that is aerated on six aluminum towers outside of the building. The gravity fed water from Staley’s Creek mixes with the spring water once leaving the hatchery building to supply the production raceways outside. This gives the hatchery a total water volume of approximately one thousand five hundred gallons every minute. The spring water temperature ranges from 50F in the winter to 56F in the summer. The creek water temperature ranges from 38F in the winter to 70F in the summer.

The hatchery building consists of fourteen vertical egg incubation towers and twenty three concrete rearing raceways. The outside production consists of fifty four (50’L x 10’W) rearing raceways and six (150’L x 30’W) large raceways.

Marion Fish Hatchery employs six full time employees.

Images by: Meghan Marchetti/DWR