Hatchery Flooded

[bfishn]

On 11/9/2024 at 7:46 AM, Quillback said:

Just curious how you got cold water to raise trout, how many you raised and where you sold them?  

To answer the rest of your question, (hardly as thoroughly as the post I lost), by the 4th year I was hatching 20K at a time. About 65% went thru the fishout, where I was unforgettably blessed with the privilege of personally helping around 10K kids catch their first fish. Cane poles and bobbers. What a hoot! My wife and I (with rare occasional help) cleaned, bagged and iced every single fish. The other 35% went to restaurants, other trout farms, live stocking, and even striper guides. The last few years I hosted and catered many large events for local clubs and companies, primarily hog roasts and smoked trout.. For starting with nothing, I'm pretty proud of what we accomplished, but the 24/7 routine killed our marriage, and the Cooper CEO decided he wanted to build a house and live there, so the place has been closed to the public since. A real shame since that's the absolute coolest place in this area.

There's hope now however, the Walton boys purchased the place in one of their recent package deals, and I've been approached by a "friend of a friend" regarding my knowledge of it. Fingers crossed (and bleeding).

[Quillback]

@bfishnThat's pretty neat, except for the marriage killing part of it.  Those Waltons are up to something, they had that fairly large land purchase a year or so ago, but have been pretty vague about what they are up to.  

[tjm]

housing for employees that must by company policy live locally?

[Skeeter ZX190]

From what's been posted on Facebook, there won't be any catch & release for quite some time as the park is closed to the public so workers can repair the hatchery and park.  

[Skeeter ZX190]

On a possible bright side, there were pictures of workers shocking and collecting fish that had escaped from the hatchery during the flood.  I would assume they are returning these fish to the hatchery so maybe it's restored to a point of being operational again.

[bfishn]

2 hours ago, Skeeter ZX190 said:

On a possible bright side, there were pictures of workers shocking and collecting fish that had escaped from the hatchery during the flood.  I would assume they are returning these fish to the hatchery so maybe it's restored to a point of being operational again.

Cool. If conditions downstream allowed for escapees to collect, they might get 1/3 of them back. At best.