Roughly 800 Brown Trout Alevin 12/16/2022

[taxid]

Yes, that is one thing I have been called! 😂

 

[iceman260]

Taxid thanks for the update, that is very interesting to watch.

[Steidyj]

The plan this year was to sell about 600 pounds of them this fall for stocking a public city pond. And hanging on to about 100 males to grow to 4 to 6 pounds the following fall to sell to taxidermists whole frozen from coast to coast like I have been. I grew 600 pounds of rainbows last year for the live stocking. However even though initially I was told that browns would be fine, now they are saying they might not want browns as they are not as "pretty" as the rainbows.  I will know for sure if they will go with them in a few weeks. If not, I will feed the females to the bass in another pond (4 to 7 pound bass) and save enough males back for the taxidermy market. The interesting thing is you can sex brown trout by the shape of their anal fin as small as 4 inches allegedly. We shall see.

Yes been dong this on an off for about 20 years. Initially I bought the fish at a small size (did that last year with the rainbows) but getting eggs shipped overnight sure beats hauling fish.

The fly in the ointment is it costs over $800.00 to health test these trout before they are planted anywhere. This really reduces my profit margin when feed and utilities is included.

Thanks for the write up! Super interesting stuff to me, was fortunate enough to take an aquaculture class while at school and have flirted with the idea of raising some type of fish in my future!
With that health test is that specifically for your state, or is that something mandated by the Feds?
Hoping there's no other gnats in your drink! Personally unless its a wild rainbow brown trout 99/100 times are prettier than a Bow, but guess I'm just an oddball 

[taxid]

Both state and federal. Recently he feds ruled brown trout are not VHS susceptible, and have taken them off the VHS susceptible list, so we would shouldn't have to spend the money to test for that virus anymore. But lo and behold my state DNR still mandates we test for it. It's easy for them to test their state hatchery trout as the taxpayer pays for their testing, not to mention as far as I'm concerned it's a conflict of interest.