`FIN-ISHING' SCHOOL BUSTLES : TROUT HATCHERY BRINGS UP YOUNG FISH RIGHT.

Byline: Christopher Noxon Daily News Staff Writer

A walk beside the ``raceway'' is a stroll along the life span of a trout.

Jim Adams watches the species grow as he takes his afternoon walk between the long concrete tanks. His first steps fall alongside tanks teeming with half-inch fry. By the time he reaches the end, the trout are half-pound adults just a bite away from a frying pan.

The fish greet him as he approaches. The surface of the water is smooth ahead and behind, but it ripples at his sides. Thousands of mottled purple creatures swarm closer.

More than 900,000 fish swim in these four concrete tanks, 99 percent of the rainbow trout that will be caught in the coming year in four surrounding counties. Brooks in the Sierra, park ponds lined by high-rises, vast reservoirs plied by power boats - 48 bodies of water in all are stocked with fish born and raised here, at the Fillmore Fish Hatchery.

``It ranges from little bitty creeks that you can step across to lakes with hundreds of miles of surface area,'' says Adams, who has managed the hatchery for 15 years.

Anglers across the state keep close tabs on this quiet facility about 15 miles west of Santa Clarita off Highway 126. When one of the hatchery trucks pulls up to a boat ramp in Lake Casitas or Sespe Creek, fishermen get out the word. State officials estimate that 80 percent of all the fish raised at the hatchery are nabbed within 10 days of their release into the wild.

Raising so many healthy fish takes both science and instinct, said Mike Haynie, senior hatchery supervisor for the California Department of Fish and Game.

``It takes a great deal of fish culture science and skill, but it's really an art form,'' Haynie said.

The process begins on Mount Whitney and Mammoth lakes, where 20,000 parent fish produce millions of tiny eggs every year. The eggs - bright yellow-orange orbs, each about the size of a pencil eraser - are sent to the hatchery in Styrofoam coolers five times a year.

After the eggs hatch, workers wait a few weeks before releasing the fish into one end of the long rectangular pools called raceways. The pools are covered in nylon nets to keep out herons and filled with clean, 60-degree water pumped and oxygenated in two mechanical towers.

It takes about a year for a fish to travel the entire length of the raceway. They graduate from one compartment to the next once they reach a preset size.

The smallest fish are fed a highly concentrated protein powder as fine as sugar. The food is blown across the water by an electric cart that travels alongside the tanks. Farthest down, pellets are tossed to the biggest of the fish.

About 6,000 visitors stop by the hatchery every summer for a look at the operation. Some fisherman stop for an early look at what they'll be snagging next year, but many visitors say they simply enjoy seeing so many fish in one place.

``A lot of people say it's peaceful,'' Adams said. ``They just come out to enjoy the day and watch the fish.''

Working with the fish every day, Adams said, makes their eventual fate just a little distasteful.

``I never eat them,'' he said. ``After raising them all year long, you're not that hungry for them anymore.''

The Department of Fish and Game opened the hatchery in 1942, largely to meet the demand of returning soldiers with a newfound passion for fly and bait fishing. The state now operates 21 hatcheries across the state, most raising salmon and steelheads.

But the hatchery program has been scaled back in recent years due to shrinking state budgets and changing family pastimes.

By the end of the year, the Fillmore hatchery will raise about 360,000 pounds of fish, down 9 percent from the year before. The hatchery, which operates on about $700,000 a year, is supported primarily by hunting and fishing licenses.

``Fewer and fewer people are fishing,'' Haynie said. ``Fishing has been strongly supported by traditional families. Fathers passed down the skill to their children. With so many single-parent families now, there are fewer fisherman.''

But if the 50-year-old state program is slowing somewhat, Adams said he doubts the hatchery will ever close.

``The hatchery will be here in 50 years,'' Adams said. ``People still like to fish. And there aren't that many places left that have clean, abundant water, so this is a good place for it to happen.''

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3 Photos

Photo: (1--ran in SIMI only--color) Jim Adams of the Cal ifornia Department of Fish and Game manages the Fillmore Fish Hatchery, which raises 360,000 pounds of trout annually.

(2--ran in SIMI only--color) Trout merge at the Department of Fish and Game's Fillmore Fish Hatchery.

(3--ran in CONEJO only) Lori Keppler with eht Depatment of Fish and Game cleans screens at the Fillmore Hatchery.

Phil McCarten/Daily News