We had an amazing turn out at our Kids Fishing Day! Over 350 people and over 50 staff and volunteers. I couldn’t do it without YOUR time and support!!!
Thank you for your patience and willingness to the new set up. I think the families really enjoyed the stations and were going back to explore them again.
Thank you so much for your support towards Genoa National Fish Hatchery!!!
We appreciate you all so much ?
Erica Rasmussen
Environmental Education Specialist
Genoa National Fish Hatchery
S5631 State Hwy 35
Genoa WI, 54632
608-689-2605
The annual Kids Ice Fishing Day at Genoa National Fish Hatchery on February 1, 2025 was an incredible success, bringing together over 500 attendees, including enthusiastic staff and dedicated volunteers! Hosted by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s three La Crosse area fisheries offices, in partnership with our Friends Group, the Friends of the Upper Mississippi, this year’s event was truly a celebration of community and nature.
With 250 children aged 5-12 participating, many of whom experienced ice fishing for the first time, the day was filled with excitement and learning. Under the expert guidance of Kyle Von Ruden, a Geneticist and avid fisherman from the Midwest Fisheries Center in La Crosse, participants received valuable ice fishing tips and a vital safety briefing before heading out to fish on pond 11.
After a morning of fishing, where many young anglers caught their limit of three rainbow trout each, families enjoyed a light lunch catered by our Friends Group. A cozy warming tent with coffee and cocoa provided a perfect spot to warm up throughout the day.
A heartfelt thank you goes out to our volunteers, the Friends of the Upper Mississippi, the USFWS staff and the Roch Kendrick memorial for making this event possible. It was a wonderful morning spent outside, fostering a love for nature among children and their families! By: Erica Rasmussen
We had over 200 volunteers this last year helping with sorting minnows, tagging Lake Sturgeon, supporting with outreach and fishing events. We couldn’t do it without your dedication and support! Thank you! We truly appreciate all of your hard work and support. By: Erica Rasmussen
The annual Kids Ice Fishing Day at Genoa National Fish Hatchery on February 1, 2025 was an incredible success, bringing together over 500 attendees, including enthusiastic staff and dedicated volunteers! Hosted by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s three La Crosse area fisheries offices, in partnership with our Friends Group, the Friends of the Upper Mississippi, this year’s event was truly a celebration of community and nature.
With 250 children aged 5-12 participating, many of whom experienced ice fishing for the first time, the day was filled with excitement and learning. Under the expert guidance of Kyle Von Ruden, a Geneticist and avid fisherman from the Midwest Fisheries Center in La Crosse, participants received valuable ice fishing tips and a vital safety briefing before heading out to fish on pond 11.
After a morning of fishing, where many young anglers caught their limit of three rainbow trout each, families enjoyed a light lunch catered by our Friends Group. A cozy warming tent with coffee and cocoa provided a perfect spot to warm up throughout the day.
A heartfelt thank you goes out to our volunteers, the Friends of the Upper Mississippi, the USFWS staff and the Roch Kendrick memorial for making this event possible. It was a wonderful morning spent outside, fostering a love for nature among children and their families!
By: Erica Rasmussen Pictures below
Photos: USFWS staff, volunteers and families on a frozen hatchery pond helping youth anglers catch a fish, kids holding up fish that they just caught and kids ice fishing at Genoa National Fish Hatchery. Photo credit: USFWS.
*Please call Erica (608)689-2605 #127 or email erica_rasmussen@fws.gov for setting up a date and time to volunteer. Thank you!
? Sorting fathead minnows (Mid-March)
? Tagging Lake Sturgeon (August/September)
? Pond Harvest (October)
? Kids Ice Fishing Day (2/1/25) & Kids Fishing Day (5/17/25)
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) annually stocks more than a million brook trout of different life stages across the country. In the Midwest region, Iron River National Fish Hatchery maintains a captive line of Isle Royale strain coaster brook trout for stocking in Lake Superior waters in support of the Brook Trout Rehabilitation Plan for Lake Superior., Coaster brook trout exhibit a unique life history trait in their use of shoreline waters of Lake Superior. Historically, coasters were widespread throughout shoreline waters of Lake Superior. To maintain genetic diversity within the brood stock, new brood lines are periodically developed. Every three to five years biologists from the USFWS Ashland Fish and Wildlife Conservation Office, Iron River National Fish Hatchery, and Genoa National Fish Hatchery travel to Isle Royale National Park to collect gametes from the self-sustaining coaster brook trout population in Tobin Harbor.
A USFWS staff holding up a breeding male coaster Brook Trout. Photo credit: USFWS.
Isle Royale National Park is situated in northwest Lake Superior closer to Minnesota and Ontario than to mainland Michigan. The crew used the U. S. Geological Survey vessel, R/V Mayfly, to make the 60-mile trek from Grand Portage, Minnesota to a Park Service cabin in Rock Harbor and set up gear in Tobin Harbor. Tourist season was over, so power and plumbing had been shut down to the cabin. We would be on our own in the wilderness with a Honda generator, camp stove and some portable Buddy heaters to provide some comfort, communication and cooking source. Our drinking water would be from the lake itself, after a good boiling of course.
Brook trout spawning occurs in October at Isle Royale National Park. In Tobin Harbor, fish spawn along the shoreline in a mixture of sand, gravel, and cobble substrate. Fish are collected throughout Tobin Harbor using fyke nets placed along the shoreline. Nets are monitored daily, and length, weight, sex and reproductive condition data are collected from all brook trout captured. If the fish are releasing gametes, they are transferred to a temporary holding pen for spawning.
Spawning commences once we collect enough ripe adults to meet our target number of families or when we reach the deadline for the work boat to be loaded onto the Park Service vessel, Ranger III, for transport off the island. Approximately 400 eggs are collected from each female, roughly one quarter of the total produced. After milt and egg collection the fish are released back to the wild. Eggs collected from each female are evenly divided into up to five batches and each batch is fertilized with milt from one male creating up to five families per female.
The fertilized eggs are then transported from Isle Royale National Park to an isolation rearing facility at USFWS Iron River Fish Hatchery. There they are incubated, and the newly hatched fish raised to breeding age during which time they undergo several fish health inspections by staff at the USFWS La Crosse Fish Health Laboratory in Onalaska, Wisconsin. If the brood class passes three fish health inspections and are confirmed healthy, they are ready to be incorporated into the coaster brook trout brood program to produce offspring for restoration stocking by USFWS and partner fishery agencies in Lake Superior.
By: Nick Bloomfield, Henry Quinlan, Joe Amundson, and Josh Hartin
The late fall is a busy time for Genoa NFH’s freshwater mussel program. Staff and volunteers have been gathering juvenile mussels from various growing season culture systems and getting them settled into over-winter systems in the mussel building at the Hatchery. Partnerships with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ Blackhawk Park and the National Mississippi River Museum and Aquarium are vital to our mussel production and culture efforts.
Culture tanks in the MARS trailer.
The trailer is placed at Blackhawk Park for the growing season, with thousands of juvenile mussels growing in each tank. The trailer and juvenile mussels are brought back to GNFH at the end of the growing season.
This season’s production focused on 9 species of mussels, and we had 14 species in culture in the MARS rearing trailer at Blackhawk Park or in mussel cages and SUPSYs at the River Museum. Plain Pocketbook, Black Sandshell and Higgin’s Eye mussels were stocked in several locations in Iowa, supporting the Iowa DNR’s mussel restoration efforts. Rainbow Mussel juveniles are being reared in culture and were stocked into the Mukwonago River supporting Wisconsin DNR restoration efforts, Fatmucket are being reared to help National Park Service efforts to restore mussels to the Cuyahoga River, and Pink Heelpslitter, Fragile Papershell and Eastern Lampmussel are in culture to support the St Regis Mohawk Tribe’s efforts to restore native mussel populations in Tribal territories. Late in the fall, Genoa NFH biologists collaborated with USGS partners to produce Salamander mussel juveniles for research and population restoration efforts.
These juvenile mussels will stay in culture in the Mussel Building until the spring, when either the MARS trailer is redeployed at Blackhawk Park, SUPSYs are ready at the River Museum, or when conditions are good for stocking the mussels into river systems. By: Beth Glidewell
In October, cages were pulled from the Harbor and juvenile mussels were sieved out of the sand and muck in the cages. A few of the 5000+ Higgin’s Eye juveniles produced this year. Photo credit: USFWS.
Each fall, the previous year’s cohort of Hine’s Emerald Dragonfly larvae are packed up and transferred to overwintering culture systems at the University of South Dakota, and at the same time the new year’s cohort of eggs arrives. The larvae that we cultured at Genoa NFH were collected as eggs in August 2023 in a severe drought, conditions that led to a limited number of Hine’s Emerald females being collected and much reduced number of eggs in the cohort. The hatching success of this cohort was also lower than previous years, but they grew well and had good survival through the later culture stages over the summer. In total, 66 larvae from the 2024 growing season were transferred for over-wintering.
The current cohort were collected as eggs in August of 2024. Water levels were low and conditions were dry this summer, but an increase in collection efforts by project partners led to a more typical number of eggs being collected from the population. The eggs that Genoa NFH received are currently in chilled ‘winter conditions’, where they’ll stay until late March/early April, when they’ll be slowly warmed to spring hatching temperatures.
By: Beth Glidewell
2024 Hine’s Emerald Dragonfly hatch (top) and end of season (bottom). Photo credit: USFWS
