Pequest Trout Hatchery

The Pequest Trout Hatchery in Oxford Township, New Jersey, is the only state-owned-and-operated trout hatchery.

It is run by the New Jersey Division of Fish and Wildlife.

My husband and I visited it in October 2023. The Hatchery celebrated its 40th anniversary in 2023:

Up to 700,000 trout annually are prepared for eventual release into the lakes, rivers, and streams of New Jersey.

In my previous post about Hot Dog Johnny’s, I mentioned that the Pequest River (which runs behind the hot dog stand) was stocked with trout for fishing.

Self-Guided Tour

You can go on a self-guided tour.

According to their website:

Learn about the Pequest Trout Hatchery by following the self-guided hatchery tour, marked by green trout on the sidewalks that lead to two different hatchery areas. The first sidewalk will take you up to the Nursery Building where you can look through the windows of both the Egg Room and the Nursery Area. The Egg Room is in operation from mid-September through early October. The Nursery Area is in use from Late September through mid-May.

The second sidewalk will take you the Observation Platform where you can overlook the raceways or pools filled with trout. The raceways hold fish year-round.

Follow the green trout:

Eggs from trout are taken and put into incubators.

When they hatch, they are transferred to the nursery, where they reside in large fiberglass tanks for about 4 months.

The raceways where the trout mature:

Then the trout are transported to their destinations in more than 200 lakes, streams, and rivers all around New Jersey.

The Nursery Building

Here is the cycle on the self-guided tour at The Nursery Building.

The Education Center

There is an education center in the main building that describes the life cycle of the trout and other wildlife in New Jersey:

According to the Campbell Scientific website:

Moving clean, cold water through a trout-rearing facility is essential to its success. A live product like trout requires detailed care 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, with little margin for error. Campbell gear has helped make control of the water at Pequest Trout Hatchery precise and reliable.

They continue:

One benefit of the new system is that its low power use and backup batteries ensure uninterrupted data collection, even during power outages. Another benefit is that the system is expandable, allowing new wells to be added and new monitoring and control components to be brought online.

Pequest Trout Hatchery has become, with some help from Campbell Scientific, one of the most modern and efficient hatcheries in America.

The New Jersey state record black bear. He weighed 829 pounds and was 13 years old.

Pequest Trout Hatchery | Oxford Township, New Jersey

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