The Mishawaka Fish Ladder is an integral part of the St. Joseph River Trout and Salmon Project, conceived in the 1970's by the Indiana and Michigan Departments of Natural Resources in consultation with the US Fish and Wildlife Service. The project includes a trout and salmon hatchery and five fish passage facilities that allow migratory fish to move through the lower 63 miles of the river from Lake Michigan upstream to the base of the Twin Branch AEP hydroelectric generation dam and facilities. The Richard Clay Bodine State Fish Hatchery, on the east side of Mishawaka, and the other ladders in South Bend, Niles, Buchanan, and Berrien Springs were intended to extend into Indiana the already successful trout and salmon fishery in Michigan waters of the St. Joseph River while supporting ecological, recreational, and economic benefits. Indiana introduced the Pacific Northwest Skamania strain steelhead to Lake Michigan in 1975, first importing eggs for five years before starting its own broodstock program; these summer-run fish begin spawning migration in June, peak in September, and are prized by anglers for their slender bodies and acrobatic behavior. The winter-run Little Manistee strain, descended from steelhead introduced to Lake Michigan in the late 1800's and sourced from a naturally reproducing population in Michigan's Little Manistee River, begins migrating as early as October and peaks in late winter. Coho salmon, first successfully stocked in a Great Lakes tributary in 1966 in Michigan's Platte River, were introduced from the Pacific Northwest to help control alewife in Lake Michigan, and Indiana obtains eggs from the Platte River; their spawning migration begins in September, peaks in October, and spawning occurs in October and November. In 1981, American Electric Power Company and the Indiana DNR signed a 40-year lease for a 10.9-acre hatchery site, and the Richard Clay Bodine State Fish Hatchery was completed in 1983 to release Coho salmon and two strains of steelhead trout into the St. Joseph River. Constructed in 1991 at the historic Mishawaka overflow Dam, the fish ladder uses slotted concrete and steel chambers to raise fish from below the dam to the water above, making upstream movement and natural propagation possible where the dam would otherwise block migratory patterns, and its appearance was updated in partnership with the City of Mishawaka in 2013.