North Arkansas Trout Hatchery Losses Could Ripple Through Outdoor Tourism

Flooding and poor water quality killed more than 2 million fish last year in trout hatcheries in north Arkansas, sending ripples of concern through the fishing industry.

But the impact of the die-offs on the health of regional tourism remains unclear. The fish died at the Arkansas Game & Fish Commission’s Jim Hinkle Spring River State Fish Hatchery in Fulton County and the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service’s Norfork National Fish Hatchery in Mountain Home.

Some officials told Arkansas Business that the deaths will be a blow to tourism, while others don’t think anglers will stay away from the Arkansas rivers, such as the White, long known for their large brown and rainbow trout and fly-fishing.

In October, about 90% of the trout and all of the trout eggs at the Norfork hatchery died. The trout that were in the Arkansas rivers at the time, however, weren’t affected by the deaths.

Meanwhile, others are looking for ways to avoid trout deaths in the future.

“A lot of what happened is in the hands of Mother Nature,” said Christy Graham, AGFC trout program coordinator. But preventing future deaths would cost millions of dollars, she said.

In response to the deaths and to prevent the trout population from being depleted, the AGFC in October barred anglers from keeping any trout they catch. The daily trout limit had been five.

Last month, however, the AGFC relaxed the ban and said people could keep two trout a day, although there are some nuances to the limits.

Trey Reid, the AGFC’s assistant chief of communications, said that the two-trout limit will be in place for the “foreseeable future.” He didn’t have an estimate for when that might change.

Game & Fish eased its initial emergency regulation as a compromise for the people coming to the area to keep the fish they catch.

Trout anglers “will have that opportunity, albeit at reduced limits, and [the limits] still maintain a quality fishery where people can go out and enjoy it, whether it’s catch and release (or) catch and keep,” Reid said.

Some around the north Arkansas fishing industry, however, say that limiting the number of trout caught discourages anglers from coming to Arkansas.

“It is going to have an impact. It already has,” said Dani Pugsley, president and CEO of the Mountain Home Area Chamber of Commerce. “We’ve seen a reduction in stays. People have canceled their reservations because of it.”

The tourism industry could feel the results of the fish deaths at the Norfork hatchery for a year or more, she said. It takes between 18 and 22 months for a trout egg to become an adult, ready to be restocked.

“Tourism is one of our largest revenue sources here on the White River,” Pugsley said. “It’s world-renowned for trout fishing. So … people come from all over, not only the United States but the globe, to trout fish on the river.”

Others expect Arkansas streams to continue attracting people who enjoy the fishing experience and don’t mind releasing the trout back to the water.

John Bracey of Little Rock, the president of Trout Unlimited Chapter 722 in Heber Springs, said he didn’t think the two-trout limit would bother people who fly-fish, which is generally catch-and-release fishing, in which anglers immediately release the fish.

“What we’ve seen is people are still coming to the river, and we’re hopeful that changes in regulation actually improve the fish size and fish numbers in the river, and ultimately we will make it a better fishery,” Bracey said.

But not every angler practices fly-fishing.

“If you’re a conventional tackle guide that relies on people catching some fish and taking them home, they’re getting hammered,” said Steve Dally, owner of Steve Dally Outfitters in Mountain Home. Dally is a fly-fishing guide on the White River system and Ozark waterways.

The AGFC’s Graham said concerns from resorts have eased after the AGFC allowed anglers to keep two trout a day.

“I don’t think a whole lot of people are going to change their plans,” she said. “Really, the message is, there’s still fish in the river. There’s still really good fishing opportunities, and I hope people don’t cancel their trips just because of this.”

And Trout Unlimited’s Bracey said that most of the fishing guides promote catch-and-release for brown and rainbow trout.

“They’ve realized that the people that are really coming and booking trips and staying at lodges are not here to fill up a cooler anymore,” he said. “That’s a thing of days past. They’re here to try to catch a trophy fish, get an amazing picture, get some measurements, maybe have a replica mount made of the fish.”

Arkansas’ trout population relies on hatcheries because the species is not native here.

Several types of trout were introduced in Arkansas through the mid-20th century as the Army Corps of Engineers built dams on a number of rivers in north Arkansas.

The cold water discharged from those dams into the rivers wiped out the native warm-water fish, but the cooler water created a suitable environment for trout.

While brown trout can reproduce in Arkansas tailwaters, rainbow trout populations require annual stockings.

Emergency Regulation

In April, major flooding on the Spring River was “devastating” to the Jim Hinkle Spring River State Fish Hatchery, Reid said.

The AGFC lost about half of its fish production, from egg to adult fish, as a result of the flooding.

But the situation worsened for the trout fishing industry. Every fall Norfork Lake has terrible water quality, Graham said. “And some years it’s worse than others as far as how extensive the poor water quality gets,” she said. “And, of course, this 2025 was a really bad year.”

In October, at the federal Norfork hatchery, fish were dying at an alarming rate.

Reid said it was not unusual for fish to die in the cold water hatchery in the fall because rising temperatures and environmental factors decrease the amount of oxygen in the water available to fish, “but this was something more significant than that.”

He said the floods in the spring had washed debris such as logs and leaves into the hatchery.

“As all that stuff settles out and starts decomposing over the summer, it very likely contributed to the water quality issues at the Norfolk fish hatchery,” Reid said.

The hatchery lost 90% of its fish, which numbered in the millions. Not all that died were trout; some were fingerling fish that were 2 inches to 3 inches long.

“I don’t know that we’ve seen a loss of this magnitude or scale at those federal hatcheries in the past,” Reid said.

Graham said that there are ways to prevent the fish dying by the millions at the hatchery, but the solutions are expensive.

One fix would be to install an oxygen diffusion system at the Norfolk hatchery, which would cost tens of millions of dollars. “Basically it’s running a bunch of tubes through the lake and then pumping liquid oxygen into the lake at certain times of the year,” Graham said. “That’s one of the types of fixes, but outside of that, there’s not a lot that can be done.”

She said that other suggestions involve moving the hatcheries, but that comes with problems too. “And of course, funding to build new facilities is not out there,” Graham said.

She said that she knows it would be an expensive fix, but trout fishing brings millions into the state annually. “So $30 [million] to $40 million isn’t that much when you’re considering hundreds of millions of dollars spent on trout fishing every year,” Graham said.