Trout farming in North Carolina

Nestled in the mountains of North Carolina are trout farms, enough to rank the state second in the country for trout production.

It was on the banks of these farms that professors, registered dietitians, writers, and other influencers gathered to learn how trout are raised, harvested, and sold during the Best of the West tour last month.

The tour started at Sunburst Trout, the state’s oldest trout farm. Started in 1948 by Dick Jennings, the farm originally raised mink and trout. The mink were processed and trucked to New York, where they were sold as fashion. I had to wonder if my great-grandmother’s minks, which we still have, came from western North Carolina.

As demand for mink faded, the farm focused on trout. The mountains are a perfect place to grow the fish, who spend their lives in concrete raceways. The land’s elevation ensures the water will be cool, but slow flowing. The perfect water temperature for trout is 57° F. We have that six months of the year.

I’d never thought about how sensitive fish are to water temperature. During the mid to late summer, when water is warmer, the fish are stressed and eat less. In the winter, the fish slow down their growth. As a result, it takes 1 to 1 ½ years for trout to grow from hatchling to the market size of 1 ½ to two pounds. Sunburst Trout’s feeding program depends on the size of the fish, time of the year and water temperature.

Trout are sensitive to contamination, so the water needs to be clean. Sunburst Trout gets their water from the Lake Logan dam, which was originally built in the 1920s for a paper mill. The village around the sawmill was known as the Sunburst community.

Western North Carolina is a destination for fly fishing rainbow, brook, and brown trout. We heard from an arborist about the decline of hemlocks and the effect on trout and other fish. The trees were common along streambanks, and their branches provided shade to the water, lowering its temperature. Hemlock wooly adelgids are responsible for the trees decline. With the loss of the trees, water temperature is increasing, which leads to lower oxygen levels and impacts the fish and other shoreline plants.  

Water temperature is the reason we don’t have outdoor trout farms in eastern North Carolina, where I live. It’s just simply to hot and dry for the trout here. 

This tour stop was a good lesson as to the power of Mother Nature and her daily effect on farms. We tend to think about it when it’s dry or really wet, but not in the day-to-day of farming. It was also a reminder that farmers are environmentalists and how critical clean water is to this third-generation farming family.