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Vermont raises its fish in public. The Department of Fish & Wildlife runs five fish culture stations - hatcheries - that together raise more than 1.5 million fish a year: brook, brown, rainbow and steelhead trout, lake trout, landlocked Atlantic salmon and walleye. Every one of the five is open to the public, free, seven days a week. You walk the raceways, watch thousands of fish move like slow clouds in the current, and at several stations you can feed them. It is one of the best free stops in Vermont with kids, and most people drive right past.
Here is how a visit works, and what makes each station worth its own trip.
How to visit
These are working hatcheries, not museums, and that is the charm. Visits are self-guided: park, walk in during open hours (generally 8 a.m. to 3 or 4 p.m.), and follow the raceways - the long concrete channels where the fish live, sorted by age from fry the size of paper clips to broodstock that will startle you. Signs explain what you are looking at. Staff are around and generally happy to answer questions, and every station runs group and school tours if you call ahead. In the fall the salmon stations are at their most dramatic, when the big broodstock fish are spawned. In June, one station throws a party (see Ed Weed, below).
Salisbury Fish Culture Station - the monster fish
If you visit one hatchery, make it [Salisbury](https://www.greenmountainguide.com/business/salisbury-fish-culture-station-salisbury), on Route 53 near Lake Dunmore, seven miles south of Middlebury. Salisbury is Vermont's broodstock station: it keeps the oldest and largest trout in the state program, the parents whose eggs - millions of them a year - supply the other hatcheries. The fish here are genuinely enormous, and seeing a four-year-old rainbow trout cruise a raceway recalibrates what you think lives in Vermont rivers. The station has raised fish since 1931 and is on the National Register of Historic Places. Pair it with a swim or a picnic at Lake Dunmore's Branbury State Park, five minutes away.Bennington Fish Culture Station - feed the trophy trout
[Bennington](https://www.greenmountainguide.com/business/bennington-fish-culture-station-bennington) is the largest hatchery in the state and the most polished visit, with a visitor center two miles from downtown. It has been raising brook, brown and rainbow trout since 1916, and its grounds are on the National Register of Historic Places. The highlight for kids: viewing ponds where you can feed two-year-old trophy trout - browns and rainbows over 15 inches that boil the water when the food hits. Watch the raceways for great blue herons, osprey and otters, which treat the hatchery as a buffet with a view.Ed Weed Fish Culture Station - Grand Isle, with aquariums
The [Ed Weed station](https://www.greenmountainguide.com/business/ed-weed-fish-culture-station-grand-isle) sits on Grand Isle in Lake Champlain - the lake is literally its water supply. It is the newest station (fish production began in 1991) and raises the widest mix: lake trout, landlocked Atlantic salmon, steelhead, walleye, and brown and rainbow trout. The visitor center has large aquariums, the self-guided tour is the most developed of the five, and every June the station hosts the Family Fishing Festival on Free Fishing Day, when kids can catch a trout right from the hatchery pond. Make a day of it with the lake shore, a creemee stand and the island roads.Roxbury Fish Culture Station - the oldest in Vermont
[Roxbury](https://www.greenmountainguide.com/business/roxbury-fish-culture-station-roxbury) began operating in 1891, which makes it Vermont's oldest fish hatchery, tucked into the valley of the Third Branch of the White River eight miles south of Northfield. It raises brook trout and rainbows, including two-year-old trophy brook trout, and produces thousands of fish a year for the Children's Fishing Program. There is a signed walking tour, fish to feed, a picnic table and a restroom - a quiet, pretty stop on a central Vermont drive, and the grounds are on the National Register of Historic Places.Bald Hill Fish Culture Station - salmon country in the Kingdom
[Bald Hill](https://www.greenmountainguide.com/business/bald-hill-fish-culture-station-newark), in Newark up in the Northeast Kingdom, is the specialist: the only station that keeps landlocked Atlantic salmon broodstock, big mature fish that are artificially spawned each fall so their eggs can supply the rest of the system. It also raises walleye for waters like Island Pond, plus brown, rainbow and steelhead trout. It is the most remote of the five and feels it - a working station at the end of a dirt-road valley, opened in 1952. Go in the fall if you can, when the salmon are at their peak.Before you go
Admission is free at all five stations, and all five are open seven days a week - hours run 8 to 3 at most, with Ed Weed open to 4 and Roxbury opening at 7. Bring the kids, bring a camera, and give yourselves half an hour per station; an hour at Salisbury or Bennington if the feeding gets going. The fish you see are next spring's stocking trucks, bound for rivers and lakes all over Vermont - which means the trout rising on your favorite water this summer very likely started life in one of these five raceways.