After a quarter century managing the Bluewater Anglers’ fish hatchery in Point Edward, Jake Van Rooyen is retiring from the volunteer post.
After a quarter century managing the Bluewater Anglers’ fish hatchery in Point Edward, Jake Van Rooyen is retiring from the volunteer post.
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“He’s an awesome guy,” said Ron Allison who is taking on the role of managing the hatchery located at Point Edward’s Waterfront Park where volunteers with the sport fishing organization raise salmon and trout to be released into local waterways.
“He’s kind of been active in every facet” of the organization, including as a board member and president, as well as hatchery manager, Allison said.
A “meet and greet” to mark Van Rooyen’s retirement is being held Saturday, 1 pm to 4 pm, at the Point Edward Optimists Hall on Monk Street. There will be a presentation at 2:30 p.m.
Van Rooyen said “age and health” are why he’s stepping down from the manager’s role. “I’m 83 years old, now,” he said.
The hatchery, which began operating in the early 1980s, was struggling when Van Rooyen first became involved in 1999.
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“It was almost to the point of shutting down,” Van Rooyen said. “Myself, and some others, didn’t want to see it go.”
“He grabbed the reins and started bringing the club back again, and bringing it around to being a well-run group,” Allison said.
In his role as manager, Van Rooyen worked with a roster of volunteers feeding and caring for fish at the hatchery, as well as traveling to Owen Sound to collect eggs and then releasing about 150,000 chinook salmon and 50,000 trout each year, Allison said.
“I would think we’re getting very close to 10 million fish” released “in the life of the hatchery,” Van Rooyen said.
He credits that success to “a lot of dedicated people over a long number of years.”
There are five to seven volunteers at the hatchery each day of the week, even on holidays, Allison said.
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Van Rooyen plans to stay involved as a consultant.
“He’s a valuable asset to me, I can tell you that,” Allison said. “If I have questions, he knows that hatchery inside and out.”
“We’ve got a real good crew now that have taken it over and are keeping it running,” Van Rooyen said.
“With the people that are there, you feel real confident that your life’s work is going to keep going.”
The work to raise and release salmon and trout remains important, Van Rooyen said. “If we don’t keep restocking them, they’ll disappear from this end of the lake,” he said.
In 2019, Van Rooyen received an Ontario Federation of Anglers and Hunters zone outstanding achievement award for his efforts supporting stewardship, conservation and promotion of angling in southwestern Ontario.
The following year, Van Rooyen received the Gord Blake memorial conservation award which is named for a former federation president and given to a member “who has done the most for conservation” within the provincial organization, Allison said.
“It’s a very prestigious award in the hunting and fishing world,” he said.
Van Rooyen, who retired from Dow Chemical where he worked as a process operator and then a manager of projects, remains an avid sport angler.
“That’s one thing I can still do, because I can sit down and fish,” he said.
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