Kansas fish farmers busy trying to restock ponds

Midsummer is usually a slow time for Kansas farmers. This year’s wheat crop is in the bins. Fall harvest and wheat planting are still several weeks away.

But farmer Brent Culver has been running nearly dawn to dark since spring, sometimes working seven days a week when the weather permits. It’s because of this year’s wet weather that he and other Kansas fish farmers are having a banner year.

“Usually we’re not this busy this time of the year, but people have water and they’re wanting fish for their ponds,” said Culver of Culver’s Fish Farm in McPherson. “It’s been pretty crazy. We’ve been taking out 20 loads some days.”

Boredom hasn’t been on Bill Hartley’s mind this spring and summer, either.

“People seem to be more confident that the drought is over, so they’re wanting to get their ponds restocked,” he said. “Even in the drought, we had people who’d get 2 inches of rain, so they’d take a chance and stock their ponds, then lose the fish. They wanted to make sure they had fish growing when the drought was over.”

Mike Miller, Kansas Department of Wildlife, Parks and Tourism information chief, said the department estimates there are more than 150,000 fishable private ponds across Kansas, ranging from half-acre, overgrown puddles in cow pastures to sizable subdivision lakes. Many thousands went dry during four years of drought and are needing fish. Culver said many lakes that didn’t go completely dry also lost their fish, either because the shallow water got too warm or the ice got too thick and froze the fish during winter.

“We’re not just talking about 2- to 3-acre ponds,” he said. “We’re restocking some 100-acre lakes.”

Drought-induced demand

Culver recently took some huge shipments of fish to Missouri. Hartley said they regularly deliver to five states. Recently, they’ve had people from five or six other states come to Hartley Fish Farms near Kingman so they could take fish home for stocking.

Culver has been involved in his family’s fish farming operation for about 50 years and said the recent drought was probably the worst he’d seen.

“We have people with ponds that weren’t supposed to go dry for 100 years go dry,” he said. “We had people with spring-fed ponds and they went dry, too.”

Culver and Hartley said most clients want a basic package that includes some fathead minnows, bluegill, largemouth bass and channel catfish. Both advise stocking the bluegill and minnows first so both species can spawn and increase their numbers exponentially. About six months later, they’ll add the bass, which will be able to fatten up quickly on so many minnows and tiny bluegill. Both fish farmers suggest pond owners get about five or six grass carp per acre so the finned herbivores can help control aquatic vegetation. Some want just the grass carp.

“We’re probably selling about 1,000 8- to 12-inch grass carp per week,” said Culver, “and a lot are going to people who never lost the other fish in their ponds. For some reason, this has just been one of the worst years ever for vegetation. We’ve had several people tell us they’ve had the pond a long time, and this was the first year they couldn’t fish it because of all the vegetation.”

Hartley said the basic packages cost pond owners about $350 per acre, plus delivery charges if needed. That figure can climb quickly, though.

He said some people want to get ahead a year so rather than fingerlings, they stock 6- to 8-inch bass that run about $3.50 apiece. Those who want the novelty of smallmouth bass or walleye in their ponds may pay as much as $10 for a 6- to 9-inch fish. Channel catfish also come in assorted sizes, and some pond owners stock more than the average rate because they’re planning on feeding the fish.

For those wanting to focus on growing trophy-size bass, Hartley recommends annual stocking of tilapia.

“The thing with them is, about every 21 days, you get a spawn and a lot more forage for your bass,” he said. “But they all die off when the water gets cold, so you don’t have to worry about them overpopulating.”

Ongoing weather challenges

The several years of hard drought, then subsequent rains this spring and summer, have made things challenging for fish farmers, too. Culver said he lost a lot of brood fish during the drought and didn’t want to carry a lot of fish through those times when few people were wanting to restock their ponds. Hartley said he always had plenty of fish, but growth rates were suppressed because densities were high in the fewer rearing ponds that held water.

More recent weather has had challenges, too. Hartley said he can’t seine many species of fish when it’s hot because the fish are already stressed from the warm water and might die when captured. Several times Culver has had to postpone filling orders when rains came and made it too muddy to drive to the ponds.

And there have been times that this year’s rains have been too much of a good thing.

“We have a guy up by Marion who lost the fish in his pond during the drought, so we restocked it. The drought continued, and he lost them all,” said Culver. “This spring we stocked it again and some big rains came, the pond flooded, and he lost all of his fish again. So we’ve restocked it a third time. The guy’s paying about $1,500 each time we’ve stocked it, so he’s obviously really wanting it fishable. Hopefully the weather will cooperate, and he can get some enjoyment out of it for a lot of years.”

This story was originally published July 27, 2015 at 10:17 PM with the headline "Kansas fish farmers busy trying to restock ponds."