Okay, the fish are cool, and I’ll get back to them in a moment but the birds hanging around run-off creek caught my attention right away.  Most of the time it is hard to get close enough to herons and egrets to take good photos but these were accustomed to people and ignored me as I snapped away.  There were also some monster Rainbows hanging around in the water pooling outside the fence.  I saw several (see photo above) that I thought were carp at first glance.  They were huge!  Good thing for them no fishing is allowed between the hatchery and a private farm downstream that uses the creek for irrigation.  Those fish were pretty hard to take photos of since the automatic focus on the camera kept locking onto the surface of the water and not the fish.  I eventually had to turn off the auto-focus and focus manually.  I spent almost half an hour watching and photographing the birds.

I turned my attention back to the fish tanks just in time to get a couple of photos at feeding time.  The truck at the right traveled along the length of the tanks shooting out food as he went.  Despite the fact the fish had just been fed, I could not resist buying a quarter’s worth of food from a vending machine and feeding them myself.  If you decide to visit (and you should) take your camera.  The Fillmore Fish Hatchery affords a rare chance to see wild birds up close.  The facility is located between Piru and Santa Clarita along Highway 126.