November 2024 • Nebraskaland 49
labor in the area because of the war.
Weiss was pretty much a one-man-
show at the hatchery. If it wasn't for
the help from anglers and his family,
production would have been cut back
even more.
After 24 years of grating liver,
grinding horse meat and carp and
propagating maggots, Weiss came
up with another solution to feeding
trout, with its principles still used
in hatcheries today. Weiss began
experimenting with a dehydrated
cereal pellet.
Previously, the cereal was in powder
form, but Weiss found that when
beef melt, which is beef pancreas, is
ground with fi sh cereal, it makes a nice
fl oating fi sh food that sinks slowly,
giving trout a chance to eat it before it
reaches the bottom.
Ground liver was still used along
with the new concept of fl oating
fi sh food at Rock Creek until the late
1970s. Nowadays, most hatcheries
exclusively feed trout fl oating fi sh
food.
If It Works ...
Rock Creek Hatchery has produced
millions of fi sh for Nebraska anglers
to catch. In 2024 alone, Rock Creek
Hatchery was scheduled to stock more
than 92,000 rainbow trout and 2,500
tiger trout.
The hatchery has also produced
many other species of fi sh. Everything
from rock bass, redear sunfi sh, crappie,
largemouth and smallmouth bass,
bluegill, channel catfi sh, yellow perch,
brown trout, brook trout, wiper and
grass carp have been raised there. Even
Kokanee red salmon were hatched in
1958 and released at Lake Ogallala.
Today, the modern hatch house
that was built in 1930 is still being
Fish culturalist Clint Burrell (left), biologist Nolan Watkins, and Julie Fraley,
Nebraska's fi rst woman fi sh production manager, load trout from the Rock Creek
raceway ponds into a truck to stock into lakes and ponds around the state.
JULIE GEISER, NEBRASKALAND
An aerial view shows the Rock Creek Fish Hatchery in Dundy County in 2000. ERIC FOWLER, NEBRASKALAND
