ULTIMATE ANGLING - the Ultimate SA Fishing website
FRESHWATER ANGLING => Fly fishing => Trout fishing => Topic started by: krissi on October 31, 2011, 07:52:55 AM
-
Hi Fly-fishermen
Not being a fly fisherperson, please can you help me? When we bought in our eyed-ova, we discovered there were quite a few (close to 10%) gold trout in the batch. Are these sort after fish? Do you guys target these, or are they a bonus if you catch one? One of my clients says he doesn't want any because they are targeted by comarants when they are stockies, as they "shine" and make easy targets?
Any feedback on these fish would be greatly appreciated.
-
Morning Krissi
Your client is 100% correct....
Family of ours run a trout farm, and it was i huge problem, to the fisherman its a score as they really are seen as being "rare". Due to their colour, and not blending in, the birds have a field day. Most of the farms (with open dams, no netting) will bring in a few each season maybe 5% of their order, so anglers still have a chance at getting one... They are seen as more unique.... But in short , birds hammer them as fingerlings..
Taste the same though
-
Hi Krissy,
Not an ardent or specialist fly-fisherman, so for me happy to catch ANY trout!
The Golden trout is supposed to be a hybrid of breeding/interbreeding the fish. Guys prefer Rainbow and Brown trout, but I think here in SA where trout fishing opportunities are rather limited nobody is going to complain about catching a Golden one, if kept for the pan or smoked - they all taste the same.
It is true, I have seen quite a few Goldens scarred or injured by birds of prey (even bigger one's) because they are so easily visible!
Well done with stocking up - we should stock all private water before the bunny huggers get their wish and have the fish eradicated in South Africa.
-
Hi Krissi,
The Golden Trout is a variant of the Rainbow Trout, almost an albino version of the Rainbow Trout which is bred specifically for the purposes of being stocked. They are very easy prey for the White Breasted Cormorant because of the reasons your client mentioned.
You dont really target them, they are a bonus when fishing for Rainbows or Browns and they will make the fly fishing dam angler very happy when one is landed!
-
Krissi if you don't mind me asking how did you get into the trout business if you weren't into fly fishing?
-
Thanks chaps - we have resorted to buying in eyed-ova as the otters cleaned out our brood stock in July :cry: They munched 63 x 2-2.2kg fish, 120 x 12" fish I was keeping for brood stock and 100 x 7" browns we had bought in for future brood stock before we could wipe the sleep out of our eyes! I emailed the farm we bought the ova from and he said that the golden trout is a species of trout, not an albino as I had also thought, so it is interesting to hear what you say WK :dunno: all I know is that we have thousands of these little "white" fish amongst the dark ones - but you can see the gold colour developing. He said the staff had used a gold trout cock on the rainbow hens by mistake.
I appreciate the feedback. :bow:
:rotfl HP - it came up for sale and my darling husband thought it would be a good business for my son, who ran it for a year, then went to study, so I was informed that it was now my business - I was chucked into the deep end and am still learning.
-
Krissi if you ever get the time to post some photos Im sure the guys would love to see it I know I would certainly be interested
-
Krissi to the best of my knowledge it is definitely not a different species of Trout... We get 3 species of Trout in Sa, Brown Trout, Brook Charr and the Rainbow Trout (Which is a specially bred Rainbow from an albino version, it is possible that now it might be classed as a subspecies of the Rainbow Trout but it never was a different species) much like the white and black Springbok, Impala and Blesbok that are bred for Game Farms...
-
Krissi if you ever get the time to post some photos Im sure the guys would love to see it I know I would certainly be interested
I will do it with pleasure HP - I was scared it would be seen as advertising, so have been reluctant to discuss the hatchery. It is very interesting and actually quite a challenge. You can't inject a sick fish like you do a farm animal :-( and treating them for diseases, etc is difficult. We battle with water temperature and flow, especially now when it hasn't rained, so keeping ponds going for brood stock can present its own problems.
@ WK - thanks for the info - I re-read your post and I agree with you. You are very knowledgable :-) so any info from you is much appreciated.
-
No problem Krissi, I might not catch a lot of big fish, but I know a decnt amount about them :hehe: w;k dont be scared to ask any other questions!
-
Why must everything in SA always turn into a race issue, even the colour of fish are'nt spared... :rotfl
Krissi...for such a worthy cause, please advertise!
-
Krissi if you ever get the time to post some photos Im sure the guys would love to see it I know I would certainly be interested
I will do it with pleasure HP - I was scared it would be seen as advertising, so have been reluctant to discuss the hatchery.
Advertising!? With pleasure... UA owes you BIG time Krissi!
-
Krissi if you ever get the time to post some photos Im sure the guys would love to see it I know I would certainly be interested
I will do it with pleasure HP - I was scared it would be seen as advertising, so have been reluctant to discuss the hatchery.
Advertising!? With pleasure... UA owes you BIG time Krissi!
Thanks Reefz - I am happy to discuss the hatchery and especially learn from others who may know of or have one - most of my clients are local, as carting the little blighters is tricky, so I certainly won't impact on the suppliers up north w;k .
-
Krissi if you ever get the time to post some photos Im sure the guys would love to see it I know I would certainly be interested
I will do it with pleasure HP - I was scared it would be seen as advertising, so have been reluctant to discuss the hatchery.
Advertising!? With pleasure... UA owes you BIG time Krissi!
Thanks Reefz - I am happy to discuss the hatchery and especially learn from others who may know of or have one - most of my clients are local, as carting the little blighters is tricky, so I certainly won't impact on the suppliers up north w;k .
Krissi I would be very keen to learn what you guys do, and how you price your fish, very interested in fish farming!
-
We bought the hatchery 3 years ago. I have been doing it for 2 years now, so am still very new at it. It is situated on the farm Splashy Fen (yes, the same as the music festival). We lease the property, as it is 13km from our home farm. We have 7 large ponds, 1 very large pond and 8 nursery ponds, which are under shade cloth. In a thatch "pandokkie" is the nursery proper ie the troughs where the eggs are hatched and swim-ups are kept until around 2". We incubate the eggs in tubes until they eye ie you can see the eyes in the eggs. They are then placed in the troughs where they hatch. When the babies can swim up to the meal, they are called swim-ups.
Water is from a pristine stream, caught in a weir and gravitated in a 120mm pipe to the hatchery, where each pond/nursery is fed off this pipe-line. This ensures a constant stream of cold, fresh, oxygenated water into the ponds. We have tremendous pressure, so the water jets into the ponds.
We started with rainbows and this is our first year in which we have browns. When we took over, we had brood stock and milked them, hatching out our own eggs - an essay in itself. We didn't have enough (Dean wasn't very successful and only managed to hatch out 365 babies) so we bought in fingerlings from a hatchery in the central berg. As I mentioned, a couple of otters found our "restaurant" and cleaned us out this year, so we were forced to buy in eyed-ova from Machachadorp. This has proved to be a far better option, as keeping brood stock means feeding them for 2 years before you can milk them, feeding them throughout the year (and boy! can those big ones eat!) and of course, running the risk of them either getting eaten or dying. We also run into water problems in the drier late winter and early spring months. Timing the milking is crucial - a week out and the hens re-absorb their eggs.
No brood stock meant we could do a lot of routine maintance on the ponds this year, which was badly needed. A lot of the ponds leaked really badly and needed re-surfacing, the hail-netting was in bad shape (which is why the otters gained access), and the "plumbing" (out-flow and over-flow piping) needed some TLC.
The ponds are like concrete reservoirs which are knee high. On the "wall" of the pond was a "fence" of hail cloth (waist high) and then a "roof" of hail cloth. We have replaced the "fence" with chicken mesh (keep those pesky otters out) and patched the hail cloth (keeps the herons, comorants, fish eagles and kingfishers out and provides shade). The whole hatchery is enclosed by a high fence and we are planning on putting an electric fence around the base - again, otter prevention, as they gained access under the fence.
Dean lost about 11 000 stockies and over 50 brood stock in the first year when the pipes clogged up in a flash flood - the ponds didn't have water jetting into them and the fish died (suffocated). This was devasting but it happened in the middle of the night, and nothing could be done.
We feed the trout a commercial trout food, starting with a meal and slowly building up to a 5mm pellet. The food is approx R230/25kg. We feed on an ad-lib basis ie you throw the pellets into the pond and when the trout slow down feeding (they get into a feeding frenzy often splashing you on the side of the pond) we stop. The babies are fed on the hour and as they get bigger, we feed less times/day until they are fed in the morning and evening only. We do not feed if the water temp is above 18 deg. We presently have around 50 000 rainbow fingerlings and 5000 browns - so it is very difficult to try and feed on a more scientific basis - 10% of body weight. Expected growth rate is around an inch/month.
Pricing is based on other hatcheries at this stage but normally works on around R1/inch. Once they reach 8" plus, the price jumps a bit as they eat more and it is expensive to keep them.
Most common diseases are white fin and pop-eye. I lost quite a few fish last year to pop-eye and with no scientific data, I believe the disease was in the fingerlings that we bought. Water temperature is critical - warm water creates an environment more condusive to disease. White fin is usually a stress condition brought on by over-crowding in the ponds and warm water. If you feed when the water temp is high, the fish cannot digest the food, bloat and die.
We prefer selling the stockies at 6". It is easier to transport them at this stage. I have 2 x 500l tanks and a few smaller ones. The tanks are fed with oxygen while transporting the fish. You starve them for 48hrs prior to transporting or handling them. This reduces the stress and because they haven't eaten, they do not soil the water in the tanks when transporting them. They will eat their own excretement and get sick. This makes it very important to sweep the ponds on a daily basis, letting the dirt get sucked out the out-flow, which is covered by a sieve, but it can block from all the poo.
For ease of management, the fish are sorted/graded a few times to try and keep the same size together in ponds. I don't have grading boards, so we do it manually - very time consuming and towards the end all the fish look the same flipn size! I definitely want to get grading boards this year. Keeping the same size fish in a pond means you don't have the big ones eating all the food (and eating the smaller ones), and when it comes to loading, you don't have to sort fish - although this still happens as they grow at different rates. We pre-sort and count out the fish the day before loading and keep them in a seperate pond. You also have to be careful that you don't transport when it is hot - a sure way to kill them. When stocking a dam, you must take the dam water temp and the tank water temp, then even out the difference by adding dam water to the tank over a period of time. A sudden temp difference also kills them. We do not throw the fish into the dam - we have a 120mm pipe with a funnel and slide them down the pipe into the water. Watching them leap out the water is so amazing!
Hope you found it interesting - it is a very basic description of our hatchery and trout farming a-la-Scott w;k
-
WOW awesome stuff thanks for sharing Krissi I will pass the word on to some people I know!
-
Really interesting stuff Krissi. Like Gareth I also find the whole fish farm thing very interesting. Some distant members of our family own a trout farm up here in JHB and their biggest problem is keeping the temp down. In summer those dams get incredibly warm!
-
Really interesting stuff Krissi. Like Gareth I also find the whole fish farm thing very interesting. Some distant members of our family own a trout farm up here in JHB and their biggest problem is keeping the temp down. In summer those dams get incredibly warm!
Yip HP water temp is the one of the things that is very difficult to control. We are lucky in that we have the stream, but it does still get hot in peak summer. Sometimes we don't feed the fish for a day or 2 or have to feed them at dawn and late evening. Having a strong through flow of water also helps. Our downside is that we are totally dependant on the stream - it ran dry last spring and we burnt out 3 pumps recycling water.
-
Hi Guys,
We've recently had this debate on another forum as well. The two attached pictures will show you the difference between the Albino trout, which I suspect is what you got and the golden trout, which is in fact very rare and sought after. I have a mission to find and land one of the Golden trout's this year. Must be in South Africa though. The Albino trout is the whitish one.
Credit to tomsutcliffe.co.za for the photo of the Golden trout.
-
Thanks for that, very interesting wernerm :+ cred:
-
This has now turned into an intense study of all the trout species of the world. i have started writing a thesis on trout throughout the globe which, in it's infancy, is standing at 62 pages. I have however completed my work on the Golden trout.
I have ascertained that Golden trout, are in fact ONLY found in the northern parts of California. The five species of golden trout are:
Volcano Creek golden trout
Kern River rainbow trout
Sacramento golden trout
Little Kern golden trout
Mexican golden trout
They are all located in areas roughly 100km's apart and in closed systems, native to that part only. The Golden trout is also the State fish of California.
If you want to catch these, you will have to travel to California. (I've done costing for the trip if any one is interested)
I also attach a geographic layout of where you can find the various trout in California.
-
This has now turned into an intense study of all the trout species of the world. i have started writing a thesis on trout throughout the globe which, in it's infancy, is standing at 62 pages. I have however completed my work on the Golden trout.
I have ascertained that Golden trout, are in fact ONLY found in the northern parts of California. The three species of golden trout are:
Kern River rainbow trout
Sacramento golden trout
Little Kern golden trout
They are all located in areas roughly 100km's apart and in closed systems, native to that part only. The Golden trout is also the State fish of California.
If you want to catch these, you will have to travel to California. (I've done costing for the trip if any one is interested)
I also attach a geographic layout of where you can find the various trout in California.
I think we are falling into the age old trap of trying to identify a fish based on a localised common name. The golden trout that you refer to in the picture does in fact occur in our waters, not to be confused with the "Albino" you get in Mpumalanga.
Contact Wolf Avni, I cannot think of a better person than him to clear this up for us...and he will be of great help on your theses too :-)
-
This has now turned into an intense study of all the trout species of the world. i have started writing a thesis on trout throughout the globe which, in it's infancy, is standing at 62 pages. I have however completed my work on the Golden trout.
I have ascertained that Golden trout, are in fact ONLY found in the northern parts of California. The three species of golden trout are:
Kern River rainbow trout
Sacramento golden trout
Little Kern golden trout
They are all located in areas roughly 100km's apart and in closed systems, native to that part only. The Golden trout is also the State fish of California.
If you want to catch these, you will have to travel to California. (I've done costing for the trip if any one is interested)
I also attach a geographic layout of where you can find the various trout in California.
I think we are falling into the age old trap of trying to identify a fish based on a localised common name. The golden trout that you refer to in the picture does in fact occur in our waters, not to be confused with the "Albino" you get in Mpumalanga.
Contact Wolf Avni, I cannot think of a better person than him to clear this up for us...and he will be of great help on your theses too :-)
You are absolutely right jaenswart - I have downloaded the pics and am going to email him right now - will let you know the outcome :-)
-
Wulf have replied to me already that there are in fact no Golden trout in our waters. The confusion comes with the brown trout when fingerling looking like the Golden trout. I attach the photo's of the Golden trout and the brown juvenile.
-
Wulf have replied to me already that there are in fact no Golden trout in our waters. The confusion comes with the brown trout when fingerling looking like the Golden trout. I attach the photo's of the Golden trout and the brown juvenile.
Great stuff thx. They look identical to me :-)
-
Herewith Wulf's reply, I find it most informative and also alarming of the state of trout in South Africa.
Hi Werner, I’m afraid not. The true golden trouts ~ augobonita apache, etc, are found in uppermost headwaters of the systems they occupy, and pretty much are small stream fish. Their small size and slow metabolism (growth rate) make then unattractive to commercial hatcheries.
The stocking fish available from hatcheries (globally) has become so mongrelized over the past 30 years that pretty much every body holds the same general genetic makeup and the many unique wild strains that exist are for the most part extinct in commercial trout production. Fishery management in this country (whole world actually) is pretty primitive and for the most part ignorance on the part of suppliers and purchaser has seen a one size fits all (whatever is cheapest in the moment) approach kind of steamroll right over most unique population pools around thre world. Incidentally, all native populations of golden trout are under extreme threat of hybradisation with mongrel fish injudiciously stocked into their naturally restricted habitats.
That’s why I am reluctant to bring fish in from other hatcheries and prefer working with the wild gene pool which I found here in the Umzimkulu from before the homogenization process took off. They are made up of a mixture of kamloops and shastus strains, with a recessive cutthroat gene acquired from the kamloops gene pool.
-
I've also mailed all the other who's who's of flyfishing asking whether they have seen a fish like this anywhere in their travels and they all replied not. These do in fact only occur in California.
PS: We are going there in December to catch all the Golden and cutthroat species in their native waters. Itinerary setup, costing done, everything.
-
Wulf have replied to me already that there are in fact no Golden trout in our waters. The confusion comes with the brown trout when fingerling looking like the Golden trout. I attach the photo's of the Golden trout and the brown juvenile.
Great stuff thx. They look identical to me :-)
Yeah man, this is where the whole thing started, I thought I caught one of them years back in the Western Cape. Turns out it must have been a brown :blush:
-
More great info! :happ:
-
Here is Wolf Avni's reply to my email. I have had mixed reactions to his first point re the fight and growth.
"The large fish is an albino rainbow. Some bright spark fixed a mutant gene and started calling the product “golden trout”. It is just a mutant version of the ordinary rainbow (Onchorynchus mykiss). The fish you got from Rainier would have this as the one parent, and this is what he would sell you as a golden trout. They have an ‘interest’ factor but are considered lousy stocking fish for the following reasons;
1. They don’t grow enormous and are considered to be under muscled and sluggish fighters.
2, Very vulnerable to natural predation having no natural camouflage so tend not to live as long in open environments as ordinary rainbows .
The other fish in the anglers hand is an authentic mature golden trout. There are 5 strains of genuine golden trout. None are available commercially. They don’t grow much beyond 25-30cm. Your pic is of a Onchorynchus augabonita augabonita (South Fork Kern River golden trout) It could perhaps even be a augabonita chyrogaster (Mexican or Rio Fuerte golden trout). But from the picture I’d figure it to be the Kern River golden. "
-
Fascinating thread! (clap) to all for the Info. :+ cred: Werner.
-
Thanks REEFMAN, roll on December. I wanted to go earlier but it seems December January is the best time to catch them. I've found a guide as well as you can't just go up there and start throwing a line, you get nicked by Fish and Game. Thei actually police their water unlike here in SA.
-
So, would you like to share those costings for the California trip with us?
-
krissi,
Pity you are so far away from Dullstroom as I have to dams I want to stock in the coming months.
I would actually enjoy owning and working a trout hatchery.
-
So, would you like to share those costings for the California trip with us?
Flights are R 22K, your transport, "gas" and accommodation in Canada is about 30K and another 20K for sundries, meals, horseback, permits and the like. it will cost you a bit over 70K for two people. The total driving around will be roughly 2700km and we need about three weeks to catch them all. You wont be in once place more than maybe three days as time won't permit.
-
krissi,
Pity you are so far away from Dullstroom as I have to dams I want to stock in the coming months.
I would actually enjoy owning and working a trout hatchery.
It is very challenging and rewarding. How far is Dullstroom from Underberg? We deliver to Maclear (about 6 hrs one way loaded but then we stock a lot of dams with bits and pieces, so that takes time) and chaps fetch from Ugie - 3-4" fish and they transport them in 1000L tank. They found it cheaper to fetch the stockies than for us to deliver them - thank goodness - my type of customer w;k .
-
Dullstroom is about 50km's away from Machadodorp...
Long way from Underberg. w;k
-
Here is the thread where I posted pictures of the hatchery
http://www.ultimateangling.co.za/index.php/topic,7299.msg106433.html#msg106433 (http://www.ultimateangling.co.za/index.php/topic,7299.msg106433.html#msg106433)
-
Very cool :tkx:
-
Krissie, Brilliant report on farming trout. :+ cred:
I will nominate it for post of the month.