LIHU‘E — The 2009 rainbow trout season at Koke‘e Public Fishing Area could be the last of its kind, as the Department of Land and Natural Resources said this week it would be terminating certain projects at the Anuenue Fisheries
LIHU‘E — The 2009 rainbow trout season at Koke‘e Public Fishing Area could be the last of its kind, as the Department of Land and Natural Resources said this week it would be terminating certain projects at the Anuenue Fisheries Research Center on O‘ahu.
“The trout hatchery is not being ‘shut down.’ Rather, certain projects are being terminated in favor of efforts that represent core activities and a focus on resource conservation,” DLNR spokeswoman Debbie Ward said in an e-mail response to questions about the closure of the Sand Island facility.
“Department-wide, we are reviewing all options given the unprecedented fiscal situation our state is facing,” DLNR Chair Laura Thielen said in the e-mail. “We are striving to find the most efficient ways to meet our mandate to protect and enforce Hawai‘i’s natural, cultural and historic resources and the places we are charged with managing.”
Ward said the hatchery at Anuenue has been in operation since 1969. “Before that, trout rearing occurred at another facility, and at one time, even on Kaua‘i,” she said, saying the operation would be closed permanently.
DLNR hatches between 50,000 and 100,000 trout each year at the facility, entirely for use in stocking Koke‘e’s reserves, the state’s only designated public trout fishing area, Ward said.
In January, DLNR announced that the 2009 open fishing season on rainbow trout at Koke‘e would run from June 1 to Sept. 30.
“Trout fishing at Pu‘u Lua Reservoir in Koke‘e has always been a popular family activity and anglers will have a chance to catch more than 20,000 stocked trout, which should weigh one pound by opening day,” Thielen said in the release, available on the DLNR Web site. “Trout just love the rain and cold we’ve been having at Koke‘e. Fishing should be good this year.”
Last year, about 2,500 anglers caught over 6,000 trout which averaged 11 inches in length and 11 ounces, the release said. The largest trout caught was reportedly about 20 inches in length and weighed 5 pounds.
One Hawaiian fishing club is unhappy about the news.
“People on Kaua‘i are going to lose their trout fishery after 90 years because of some back-door trickery,” said Louie “The Fish” DeNolfo, secretary of the Hawai‘i Waikahe‘olu chapter of Trout Unlimited, in a Tuesday phone interview.
DeNolfo, who said the trout fishing program is “a real money-spinner for Kaua‘i,” accused Gov. Linda Lingle and Department of Land and Natural Resources Chair Laura Thielen of being “some kinda tree huggers who don’t give a (expletive) about fishing.”
In another interview Friday evening, DeNolfo said he had heard DLNR would be shutting off the water at Anuenue at the end of June, killing “all those baby fish” as well as his club of 140 to 150 members.
Because the pH and water temperature at Koke‘e are not conducive to trout reproduction, and because the area has put-and-take rather than catch-and-release rules, if DLNR stops sending fish, there soon won’t be any left.
“We just want the trout fishery to be there. We just want to keep a 90-year tradition going,” he said. “It’s so unique to have trout in the tropics. … People fly in from the Mainland to say they caught a rainbow trout in the jungle.”
In a letter he sent to Gov. Linda Lingle, DeNolfo offered the assistance of his Trout Unlimited colleagues, saying the club “is poised and ready, and have received tacit permission from the DLNR, to provide the man power to physically stock the cooler streams and ditches of Koke’e by backpack and hiking, via our club membership, Punahou students, interns already there at Koke‘e, Boy Scouts, and many concerned anglers.”
“Should the state wish to not continue to be in the business of hatcheries in the future, we are also hoping that a school, either Waimea on Kaua‘i or Punahou here on O‘ahu might be allowed to house and use the equipment now at Anuenue to set up a ‘Trout in the Classroom’ school project, as the trout rearing tanks are fairly small,” DeNolfo wrote.
It is unknown how much money DLNR will save by ending the operations, or to what projects those funds will be applied.
For more information, call the DLNR Division of Aquatic Resources at 274-3344 or visit www.hawaii.gov/dlnr/dar. To learn more about Trout Unlimited’s Hawai‘i chapter, visit www.tuhi.org
