Something fishy is going on at Hallers Creek Brown trout raised by Southwest High School students in Frank Kugel's biotechnology class are measured before being released into the NEW Zoo ponds and Hallers Creek Thursday (photo by H. Marc Larson). Southwest High School biotechnology students release class-raised trout into waters By Monique Balas News-Chronicle Thursday morning went swimmingly well at the NEW Zoo as Frank Kugel's 20 biotechnology students released their class project - 492 sucessfully-raised brown trout - into the waters of Hallers Creek. The program is dually beneficial: The Southwest High School students got a lesson on the science of raising the trout, and Brown County residents get more fish to fry when the season opens Saturday morning. "This is a lot better than just sitting in a class looking at a book. It's a lot less boring," said sophomore Jennifer Poole, who is considering a career in marine biology. "You have the responsibility of keeping the fish alive." The fish come from the Wild Rose Fish Hatchery, which is operated by the state Department of Natural Resources. They came from an original stock of 500, but eight died in the process, said Randy Larson, a supervisor at the hatchery. Kugel has been doing the project for the better half of a decade. "Every year (Kugel) improves his aquaculture program," Larson said. "He does a real nice job." The first year, Kugel said, "We started out with 100 fish. Now we've worked our way to 500. We lost only eight - that's excellent." Kugel's students learn about everything from water quality to fish nutrition to math, such as figuring out how many fish can fit in a tank. The class gets the foot-long brown trout in the fall and keep them in two 1,000-gallon tanks in the classroom, which is a certified fish rearing facility, he said. "We need to do a project with living animals that give us a purpose to come to school," Kugel said. "I'm on 24-hour call; if something goes wrong, they call me. And Christmas vacation? I have no Christmas vacation." Most of the students are in the class because they are interested in the outdoors. "I really learned a lot," said junior Josh Delforge. "Maybe one day I'll be working for the DNR."