[juanbenae]

Had a pretty cool experience yesterday riding along with a buddy who works at the local State Moccasin Fish Hatchery to stock fish at Pinecrest Lake. He picked me up right near my house and we made the 30 mile run up 108 to the lake. We stopped two times to check the fish, which I learned meant toss any dead, dying, or lame fish floating at the top of the tank in a bucket, the last time being about a 1/4 mile prior to the boat ramp where we deposit them. Apparently, some people lucky enough to be around the stocking location get all bent if dead fish are deposited *****ing at my buddy and calling the hatchery to complain as I was told. We pulled 5-6 out during our 2 stops on the way up the hill. The stocked Rainbows are what they call "1/2 pounders", some being smaller and others looking closer to a pound to me. This is the largest truck the hatchery has, and we took about 600 pounds of fish in this trip. Pinecrest is very popular and these were stocked for the holiday weekend masses.

He toured me around the hatchery 4-5 years ago and that was equally as cool seeing all the little fingerlings of many different trout types, and then once outside the in ground tanks with differing age/sized fish. They also have a couple dedicated tanks for what the sign calls "trophy fish" which were huge trout that live there never to be stocked. They are for looking at.. Cool morning for sure.