Sunday, October 11, 2009
Meet the man who is all about fish
Mark Taylor is outdoors editor at The Roanoke Times.
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Mark Taylor
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Were he to have some input on his nickname, Kevin Patterson might not have picked 'The Fish Guy.'
But that's who he is because, well, it's what he is.
The owner of Southeast Pond Stocking LLC, Patterson was in the area on Saturday for deliveries.
One of his stops was at Roanoke's new Tractor Supply Store, where Patterson stood in the parking lot selling fish and talking about the life of 'The Fish Guy.'
It's not boring.
At least not the way Patterson talks about it, something he can do with impressive eloquence and stamina.
"They asked me to be a speaker at an aquaculture conference," said Patterson, who doesn't deny his gift for gab. "They gave me the slot right before dinner because they said they knew that I also like to eat, so they figured that would force me to shut up."
Patterson says he got started in commercial aquaculture right after college, having studied the subject at UNC Wilmington.
His first job was hardly glamorous.
"I worked the night watch at a facility that raised hybrid striped bass, which they sold to restaurants in the Northeast," he said.
Night watch consisted of checking oxygen levels in 60 ponds.
"Each one had at least $30,000 worth of fish in it," he said. "They didn't want to lose any of them."
After moving into the hatchery side of the business Patterson decided to start his own company more than a decade ago.
Southeast Pond Stocking has 16 ponds on 50 acres in Currie, N.C., near Wilmington.
While the company raises and sells some food fish, its focus is on selling game fish such as largemouth bass, crappie, catfish and sunfish to individuals looking to stock ponds.
The company will deliver fish directly to farms. But a big part of the business are the so-called fish days, when Patterson and assistant Frank Ebbinghouser load up their trailer-mounted fish tanks and take off for one-, two- and three-day trips during which they make a number of stops.
"We mostly go to farm and garden and feed and seed stores," said the burly and bearded Patterson, who also happens to be a drummer in a reggae band.
About 60 percent of the fish they haul along have been pre-ordered, but Patterson always brings along some extra fish.
They don't do the trips in the dead of summer or winter because transporting fish in extreme heat or cold doesn't work well.
During the busy seasons the job fully occupies seven days a week.
"We're constantly catching fish from the ponds, putting them in raceways for a couple of days then trucking them to customers on the weekends," said Patterson, who has been making four trips to the Roanoke area for the past couple of years. "Then on Mondays we start all over again."
The company's delivery truck, which is just five years old, just broke the 300,000-mile mark.
Most of the fish carry individual prices.
Bluegills that are 2 to 3 inches long cost 45 cents each, for example. Largemouth bass that same length are $1.10, with 4- to 5-inch largemouths going for $2 each.
Saturday afternoon William Cadd of Hardy wanted to buy some crappies, but Patterson was already sold out. Instead Cadd forked over $20 for 10 fingerling largemouths. He said he'd rather buy known clean fish than stock fish caught with a hook and line elsewhere.
"I don't want to bring disease into my pond," said Cadd, who has mostly crappies and catfish in a small pond that his grandkids enjoy fishing. "You go down to the lake, you don't know what you're getting."
It can take about 18 months for fish stocked as fingerlings to reach catchable size, so buying small fish requires some faith and patience.
Most customers have it, but not all do.
"Some older customers will say, 'I've waited 50 years to build this pond, and I'm not going to be around another five years so I need big ones now," said Patterson, who will gladly sell larger fish if he has them.
While Patterson clearly is into the fish side of things, he also seems to have a knack for the business end, too.
Patterson has a Web site (www.seponds.com) and maintains an e-mail list of customers and sends out alerts with delivery schedules. He advertises upcoming fish days in newspapers, including this one, and pays a commission to the host stores so they can help him promote upcoming fish days.
Focusing on business is critical, he said.
"There are a bunch of people who get into this business because they love fish," Patterson said. "Then they lose a bunch of money and get out."
At it 12 years now, Patterson keeps building on his reputation.
"I'm always 'The Fish Guy'," he said, laughing. "I can't go to the grocery store without talking fish."
And he likes that just fine.
