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Given the amount of time it takes to supply a hatchery with fresh fish, the White and North Fork rivers won't get many new trout until next summer.

Because of a catastrophic fish kill at the Norfork Federal Trout Hatchery, there are very few fish to stock in the White and North Fork rivers.

On Oct. 16, the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission passed emergency regulations that relegate much of the White River and all of the North Fork River to catch-and-release fisheries for the next four months.

The emergency regulations will be in effect for 120 days, but only because an emergency order is limited to a maximum of 120 days. The Norfork hatchery will not be able to produce enough trout in 120 days to catch back up to its accepted standard. With that in mind, expect the AGFC to pass another emergency action in February.

Mike Armstrong, former chief of fisheries for the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission, offered his perspective. The situation that befell the Norfork hatchery is not a one-off. We are getting more large rainfall events in the spring.

"Recall that both Bull Shoals and Norfork (lakes) were both well above their normal (conservation) pool levels well into the summer," Armstrong wrote in an email. "High inflows from above normal rainfall washes debris, silts, leaf matter and all sorts of nutrient laden material into the lake.

"When these inflows occur before the lake stratifies in early summer, the nutrient-laden water is dispersed throughout the water column, then becomes trapped below the thermocline. Natural decomposition of the organic nutrient material uses up the oxygen of the deep cold waters, leading to anoxia."

Anoxia is lack of oxygen. The hydroelectric turbines and the hatchery penstocks draw from this deep, cold water. It feeds the hatchery and the tailwater fishery.

"When it goes anoxic, (that's) the problem," Armstrong wrote. "This hypolimnetic anoxia is occurring with much more frequency than in the past."

Armstrong noted that the White River watershed has also developed exponentially over the past 50 years, especially in Northwest Arkansas and Branson. More concrete diverts water more quickly into the White River and its tributaries instead of water soaking into the ground. That causes lake levels to rise faster.

"Ironically, during years with low or below normal winter and spring rainfall, Bull Shoals and Norfork suffer hypolimnetic anoxia less severe and/or later in the fall," Armstrong wrote.

"The amount of electrical generation can impact the timing of the anoxia development by drawing down the pool of cold, oxygenated water, but for the most part, high spring/early summer inflows means late summer/fall anoxia."

The Corps of Engineers, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Game and Fish Commission are aware of solutions, Armstrong added.

"As far as the hatchery is concerned, the best, and really only viable solution, is the direct injection of liquid oxygen into the penstock feeding the hatchery," Armstrong wrote. "Unfortunately, there are other issues caused by anoxic conditions that the hatchery would have to solve."

One is dissolved manganese coming out of solution when the water is re-oxygenated, Armstrong wrote. Precipitate manganese is what stains the rocks black below Norfork.

"Trout don't take well to having their gills covered with the stuff, but there are solutions to this as well," Armstrong wrote.

The fish kill at the Norfork hatchery coincided with a huge flood that took the Game and Fish Commission's hatchery on the Spring River offline for several months. The same thing happened in 2017.

Interestingly, the Kroger Corporation formerly owned the Spring River hatchery. A flood knocked it offline in that era, too. Shortly after, Kroger sold it to the Game and Fish Commission.

"At one time the federal government offered the AGFC the Greers Ferry Hatchery, complete with equipment and fish," Armstrong said. "With the recurrent flooding and damage to the Spring River Hatchery, (and the current downsizing of the federal workforce), perhaps it is time to revisit that subject. The bonus is the Greers Ferry doesn't suffer from the same low dissolved oxygen problems as do the White River reservoirs. And it doesn't flood."