The North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission’s (NCWRC) Armstrong State Fish Hatchery in McDowell County north of Marion sustained significant damage as a result of flooding and landslides during Hurricane Helene. Some of the hatchery’s trout escaped during the flooding; however, most of the 600,000 fish of various sizes died when the storm compromised the water supply to the raceways and hatchery building. Currently, Armstrong State Fish Hatchery is closed indefinitely. Fisheries staff along with agency engineers continue to assess the damage and are developing plans to return the hatchery to normal operations.

While the damage to Armstrong is significant and will require extensive repairs to restore operations, the Bobby N. Setzer, Table Rock and Marion State Fish hatcheries received limited damage and are fully operational. Therefore, the Commission has decided to temporarily delay the already planned renovation to the Bobby N. Setzer State Fish Hatchery until the Armstrong is back fully operational to ensure stocking in Public Mountain Trout Waters, and staff at Setzer have begun to ramp trout production back up to full speed.

Commission biologists have assessed all Delayed Harvest Trout Water locations over the past few weeks to determine what areas may be safe to stock and for anglers to fish. According to Assistant Chief of Inland Fisheries Corey Oakley, “Staff will continue to evaluate Delayed Harvest Trout Water locations for accessibility to anglers. Every effort is being made to stock all accessible locations so that anglers, both from western North Carolina and who visit, can enjoy Public Mountain Trout Water streams in areas unaffected by Hurricane Helene.”

“The tremendous work staff has done to get production back up at Setzer and to evaluate all of our Delayed Harvest Streams will enable us to stock some of our Delayed Harvest Trout Waters beginning the first week of November, and additional stockings will occur the first week of December,” Oakley added. Delayed Harvest Trout Water locations that will be stocked can be found at ncwildlife.org/trout.

As information becomes available regarding Armstrong State Fish Hatchery’s restoration and future Public Mountain Trout Waters stockings it will be posted on the agency’s website at ncwildlife.org/trout.