Long before anglers reel and trout, this is where you'll find them.

Tank after tank filled with tens of thousands of them.

At the Lafayette Trout Hatchery in North Kingstown, Rhode Island fish and wildlife employees are raising rainbow trout, brook trout and sebago salmon, a type of landlocked Atlantic salmon.

- This is our nursery area, our hatch house, where the fish start out their lives.

- [Michelle] Christine Dudley is the Deputy Chief of Freshwater Fisheries at the State's Department of Environmental Management, known as DEM.

Inside this hatch house, they're raising 250,000 trout.

Once they're about 18 months old, they'll be released into ponds, lakes, streams, and rivers throughout the state, - We are providing something for anglers to go after and enjoy, and we're providing them many different areas where they're easily accessible.

- If not for the work that happens inside of the state's three trout hatcheries.

Dudley says fishing enthusiasts wouldn't have enough trout to catch.

Why is it best to raise trout from the state's perspective?

- Trout indicate cool, clean, highly oxygenated water, so they're in pristine areas, that makes it a type of fish that is attractive to people.

- [Michelle] And lots of people are eager to get them.

Rhode Island has about 25,000 licensed fresh water recreational anglers, many fish specifically for trout.

Dudley says the state buys eggs, for instance, of rainbow trout, which aren't native to Rhode Island.

Brook trout is the only native trout species in the state.

Fish and wildlife workers also spawn some fish themselves.

- We take the eggs from the female, the milk from the male, mix that together so that they're fertilized, and then they go into trays, fertilizing trays, and they're incubated there.

- [Michelle] And once those eggs hatch- - They're small little fish, and they have their egg sack yolk right on their stomach.

You'd see it right on their stomach, and they're living off of that.

- [Michelle] These baby fish, known as fry, are then placed into tanks.

- They're on an automatic feeder.

They're fed 24/7.

- [Michelle] Their food is high in fish meal and fish oils, which Dudley says allows them to grow faster and bigger.

- They're weighed every day so that we can calculate how much feed they need to grow.

And then when they get to a fingerling size, which is your finger size, they go out to our raceways outside.

- [Michelle] By the time the fish are 18 months old, Dudley says they're generally ready to be stocked.

On this cold day, we followed along as employees scooped up hundreds of fish from the hatchery and set out to stock ponds in Northern Rhode Island.

It's a big lift.

These are heavy nets that can carry about two dozen fish.

- The truck is pretty high up, so they have to be lifting fish one to another person into the truck.

They have to have oxygen going in the truck.

So at the hatcheries themself, getting prepared to go out is difficult in any kind of weather.

(truck rumbling) - [Michelle] Including a snowy morning.

When state workers arrived at little Round Top Pond in Burrillville, they used a chainsaw to break through the sheet of ice covering the pond.

Then, it was time to stock it with rainbow trout and brook trout.

Occasionally, there's an audience.

- We even have people that follow the truck.

I mean, we have people, they probably call on their phones, "The truck has left the hatchery," and they will follow the truck sometimes.

- [Michelle] Stocking in the winter months can be a grueling part of the job, working in below freezing temperatures and trying not to slip on the ice.

(chainsaw buzzing) But Kenneth Fernstrom, a senior biologist with DEM, says it's also rewarding.

He shared a story of an angler who recently caught a 15-pound rainbow trout at Peck Pond in Burrillville, which was stocked by the state.

- We gave someone a product and made someone happy.

Like how many people have a job that makes people happy?

- There are a few fish that are bigger fish that they call them breeders, but they're not all fish that you take eggs from.

But they're big fish.

And they try every time they stock to put a few of them out around the state.

And boy, that fish is really something.

He's gonna be bragging about that forever.

(chuckles) - [Michelle] The people who work here enjoy sharing what they love about the job.

- A part of my job is raising the eggs to fry.

That's like you watch 'em birth and they hatch out and they start feeding.

You get to see something from stock to finish.

- [Michelle] And like Fernstrom, Dudley is passionate about getting more children interested in fishing.

- Most people that fish will tell you the first fish they caught and they will remember it always.

My first fish was a brown Bullhead.

I caught with my grandfather.

I was five.

I would not touch it because it was slimy and it was flopping around.

But he said to me, "Look what you did.

Wow, you caught this fish."

And that appreciation is what a child gets.

That's pretty powerful.