Aug. 19, 2010 - Landowners with ponds on their property are stocking fish now that the ponds have water in them again. This year has helped replenish ponds that for the previous two years left many landowners without enough water to support fish.
That's good news for Larry Spitzenberger, who has been raising fish on his property in Lee County near Giddings for 26 years. Business for Larry's Fish Farm fell of dramatically last year during the worst of the drought, but has rebounded after this year's spring and summer rains.
"This is just like any other agricultural operation. A lot of it depends on the weather," he said. "The last couple of years, nobody had any water in their tanks and they couldn't stock fish. It's kind of like the stock market. It goes up and down. A lot of people are stocking fish again now that they have some water."
Spitzenberger supplies stocking fish mostly to private landowners interested in either providing some recreational fishing or who have vegetation problems and need some voracious vegetarian fish to control the problem. He supplies two species of catfish, five species of perch, flathead minnows, hybrid Florida bass, black crappie, goldfish, koi, tilapia and grass carp.
The most popular fish is the channel catfish along with the flathead minnows, which have the task of providing themselves as food for the bigger fish, he said. Though some people may prefer to fish for bass, Spitzenberger said most people stocking game fish go with the catfish.
"With bass, the maximum population you can sustain is about 100 per acre," he explained. "You can get 600 catfish to an acre if you feed them enough."
Tilapia has become a staple on menus in recent year,s but the tilapia that Spitzenberger stocks are used to eat the algae that can flourish under certain conditions and choke the life out of a pond. He doesn't have a processing license so he doesn't sell his fish for consumption. The tilapia is good at eating algae, but is susceptible to cold snaps; they die if the water temperature drops to around 50 degrees.
Grass carp do the same job as tilapia, but a permit from Texas Parks and Wildlife is required to get grass carp. That costs $20 for the permit and an extra $2 per fish.
Spitzenberger grew up on a farm in Lee County, and has learned to keep his options open when it comes to making a living. He worked for several years for the Alcoa Corporation in Rockdale, before that facility closed. He's always maintained a small cow-calf operation, but got into the fish farming business mostly by accident when a stock tank behind his house was leaking. He dug two small ponds to catch the water and bought 500 pounds of catfish with an idea of growing them to a decent size and then selling them. The catfish thrived in the ponds and Spitzenberger realized he wasn't sure what to do about it.
"I had so many fish in my little pond I didn't know what to do," Spitzenberger said. "I was having a lot of problems with disease and I was back and forth between here and Texas A&M all the time, trying to find out what was wrong with my fish and what I had to do to keep them."
After he started selling catfish from his new fish farm he received a visit from the local game warden, who told him that he needed a fish farm license from Texas Parks and Wildlife. The permits are now issued by the Texas Department of Agriculture. He has holding ponds behind his house and three vats where he keeps the fish that are ready sell.
Customers can pick their fish up at the farm, but Spitzenberger will deliver the fish. Most of his customers live within a hundred miles of his farm but he has delivered to customers as far north at Texarkana, east to the Louisiana border as well as deep South Texas and as far wrest as Ozona and Midland. He also makes deliveries to feed stores.
The busiest time of year for the farm is February through May, when fish are spawning and ponds are being stocked with fish, but he stays busy with the operation most of the year. "I started out just for the fun of it, but it's turned into a 24-hour, seven day a week job," he said.
Just as his cattle are sometimes plagued by predators like coyotes, his fish have predators too. Water moccasins are more than a little intrigued by his fish vats and Spitzenberger often has to fish one or more of the big snakes out of his vats. A dog, a stray that he adopted, loves nothing more than killing snakes and will come running every time Spitzenberger makes a certain call that he means has a snake to kill.
"He flips them (the snakes) over and they're dead before you know it," he said.
Spitzenberger said the business is steady enough to support him and his family, at least when people have water in their tanks, and that he would like to expand with a few more vats. Other than that, he enjoys the operation as it is right now.
"I enjoy it a lot, or I wouldn't have stayed with it this long," he said. "It's a lot of work and a lot of uncertainty, but not any more than anything else I could be doing."
