YAKIMA -- Jeff Tayer's grin was that of a boy who had just pulled a big fish out of a lake, and this is why: He had just poured a bunch of little fish into a lake.

Although he works for the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife, Tayer is its regional director, meaning he spends precious little time outdoors doing the activities that attracted him to the wildlife agency in the first place. His typical day is spent in cubicles and boardrooms, in staff meetings, public hearings, acquisition discussions and planning sessions.

On this recent Thursday afternoon, though, he had hiked in to Deer Lake, a small, high-country lake in the southwest corner of the William O. Douglas Wilderness, just off the Pacific Crest Trail.

The sky was shrouded by clouds and a fine mist, but the air was cool and clean and blue skies and a bright sun might as well have been shining directly on Tayer.

"This," he said, beaming, "is my favorite thing to do."

Tayer had just poured 1,200 cutthroat trout fry into the lake and watched as they darted this way and that, exploring a world far more intriguing than the hatchery raceways in which they had been spawned.

"No more beautiful setting for a fishery than here in the high lakes," he said. "You get the exercise, you get out in a beautiful area, the lakes are beautiful, the fish grow up in nice, cold, clear, clean water. They aren't raised up to 10 inches long in a hatchery -- they're raised out here in nature."

Until that day, though, the cutthroat fry had known nothing but the artificial confines of the WDFW's Naches hatchery. They arrived from a Chelan hatchery in June as eggs, and by late August they were a nervous mob of 2-inchers, so insubstantial that it would take nearly 500 of them to weigh one pound.

The bulk of the region's hatchery lake-stocking program involves lakes that can be easily driven to. The annual stocking output of the Naches hatchery alone is 125,000 catchable (one-third pound) rainbow trout for lowland lakes, plus another 35,000 rainbow fry that go to upland lakes; 7,000 jumbos raised at the hatchery to a pound each prior to release; and 15,000 cutthroat fry, of which 7,000 go into Bumping Lake and the other 8,000 are intended for backcountry lakes.

The latter is where trips like Tayer's come in. Each summer, the region stocks about three dozen high lakes that are accessed not by forest roads, but only by narrow trails.

That means the fry must be hauled in by foot or horseback, relying on volunteers from the Washington State Hi-Lakers and various Backcountry Horsemen chapters, and -- as in this case -- wildlife department staffers.

"In getting them to the lake, we rely heavily on volunteers and department staff," said Matt Mathes of the Naches hatchery. "We get some great help from the Backcountry Horsemen getting fish into the lakes; without those guys, the job would probably not get done."

Some Backcountry Horsemen from the Yakima/Naches area, notably Jess Heaverlo, Jack Staehell and Gary Carter, have been participating in the stocking program for three decades, always on a volunteer basis. "That shows the commitment these guys have," Mathes said.

Historically, a lot of up-country lakes -- at least, the larger ones -- were stocked by aircraft. But that meant paying for the pilot, use of the plane and fuel costs that have now all but ended that practice. And the airborne stocking also risked the possibility of fish-drop loads missing the target and scattering the little fish on the lakeshores, not in their intended home.

"It's probably a little easier on the fish, too, I imagine, doing it the way we do it now," Tayer said. "These fish are pretty hardy, but I would think the survival rates are even higher this way. And this is the most cost-effective fisheries program we have. The fish cost us almost nothing, we have very little money into them, and the survival rate is so high."

Lake stocking is a scientific balancing act for the biologists who determine how many fish will go where. Stock too many fish and the fish will suffer; there's only so much biomass in the lake for the tiny trout to feed on. Stock too few and, while the fish may grow up fat and happy, there won't be as many happy fishermen.

Last Thursday, Mathes gathered and poured the 1,200 cutthroat fry, along with sufficient dosages of the Naches River water that fill the hatchery raceways, into three large, expandable, plastic jugs. The jugs were then filled to near-bursting with oxygen -- enough to sustain the fish through however many hours it will take the carrier to get them to the lake -- and placed in ice chests and loaded into Tayer's SUV for the drive to the trailhead.

The fish Tayer hauled up won't be catchable-sized for two years. They might be 6 or 7 inches long by the end of next year; the next two years, Tayer said, "is when you get your lunkers ... if there are any left. If they haven't been caught by fishermen, or an osprey, or otters."

Once at the lake, Tayer placed the jugs into the shallows long enough to adjust the fish water to the lake temperature, putting lake water into the jugs to minimize the shock to the fishes' systems. Within a half-hour, they were poured into their new home.

And Tayer was smiling.

Because now, that responsibility done, he had another one: to toss out a fishing line and catch an adult trout or three.That's part of the stocker's job -- to see how well the fish from previous years' plants were holding up, by catching a few trout, assessing their size and apparent health before releasing them.

"Hey, it's a tough job," Tayer said with a grin, casting a lure far into the lake. "But somebody's got to do it."