Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, August 4, 1995 TAG: 9508040025
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV1 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: RAY COX STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: NEWPORT LENGTH: Long
Ackerman has fallen back to fight another day more than once. Water and wind, parasites and bacteria, viruses and predators - they don't give up either.
The trout business hasn't turned out to be as easy as it looked. Ackerman and his wife, Libby, are still in it, though.
Six years and counting, right there just past the confluence of Still Creek and Greenbriar Creek and beyond the Methodist church, tucked into the hillside that runs along Virginia 42 in downtown Newport.
Greenbriar Trout Farm, as Ackerman's venture is called, borrows water from the rushing mountain stream as it makes its way to Sinking Creek, diverting the flow into a Rube Goldbergian network of plastic piping that carries it into a series of fish-filled (rainbow trout mostly, some brook) holding tanks, branching off into a small pond, and finally shoots it through to the main stream beyond.
``You work with what you have,'' said Ackerman, 72 and well into his second career
What the Ackermans have now is not enough big fish to put in the catch-out pond. Hence, that end of the operation is temporarily shut down. That's just as well. Trout don't bite well in hot weather and fisherman are less interested in the wait.
Income, meanwhile, is derived from off-the-street customers, Asians from Blacksburg mostly, who come usually just before dinner for fresh fish.
Ackerman gets his fish when they are at the fingerling stage, 3 inches long and about 5 months old, from a man just down U.S. 460 and across the border in West Virginia. Ackerman transports them with his four-wheel-drive pickup truck by means of a 200-gallon, aerator-equipped (to supply the oxygen that the delicate fish need to survive the trek) tank.
Fourteen to 16 months later for the rainbows and somewhat less than that for the brooks, he has a 1-pound-or-so fish which he deposits in his pond. His customers pay $2.15 per trout to fish them out.
``The first two years were a disaster,'' Ackerman said. ``Now, we're starting to make a little money.''
The first couple of years saw the banes of the trout farmer: pestilence and predators. When these fish get sick, so do their neighbors. And it happens fast. Sometimes a guy can wake up in the morning, venture out to examine his stock, and find that the whole operation has literally gone belly up.
``You can lose $1,000 in minutes,'' Ackerman said.
When that happens as a result of what they call in the transportation industry ``operator error,'' it can be particularly heartbreaking. Ackerman knows it well.
One time, he failed to reopen the valve that keeps the tanks replenished with oxygen-rich fresh water after cleaning out one of his runs. Before he knew it, he had a floating graveyard. Another harsh lesson learned. Now he has installed an ingenious little alarm system to warn him against repeat lapses.
Subtler but no less devastating in the long run are the couple of dollars here and a couple of dollars there lost due to the raccoons, minks and snakes that come down off the mountain and the kingfishers and herons that come down from the heavens.
Funny that the guy who sold Ackerman the trout farm never mentioned most of this.
``I had to learn it myself the hard way,'' Ackerman said.
Not even a biochemist could have foreseen all such a career move would involve. And a biochemist was what Ackerman was, 30 years on the faculty at Virginia Tech. When time came to retire, his predecessor on the trout farm was preparing to sell out.
``We'd raised three kids in a house in Blacksburg and it was time for a new house,'' Ackerman said. ``We were going to build a new one when this one came on the market. It looked interesting, so we bought it.''
Libby Ackerman may have had a different sort of retirement in mind, but she kept most of that to herself.
``There's a lot of work to this,'' she said. ``More than we'd anticipated. It keeps us tied down a lot. I don't like that part of it very much. He enjoys it, so it's OK.''
She works hard, too, although she prefers to defer all questions to him.
Ackerman was never really a fisherman, but the challenges brought out the scientist in him.
``I think I've read every book on trout in the VPI library,'' he said.
The books didn't give a accurate picture of what was involved. You don't get a true appreciation of hauling a ton (40 50-pound bags) of fish feed every six weeks until you actually do it.
``I load 40 50-pound bags, then I turn around and unload 40 50-pound bags when I get back home,'' he said. ``So I tell people I loaded and unloaded two tons of feed.''
And the books don't tell you about the predators that walk on two feet.
One day, some guys came by and said they wanted to take a look at some fish. Ackerman, a genial sort, obliged, leaving them to examine the stock beneath the bird-proof screen frame at their leisure.
Upon his return, the men were gone. So were fish, pilfered by net through a neatly-cut hole in the screen.
That wasn't as bad as it could have been.
Ackerman tells what he calls ``a sad little story'' about his predecessor. The man was going to sell 8,000 fish one year and had them rounded up in one of the lower holding tanks. The day before the fish were to go to market, some kids came along, lifted the gate, and set the trout free to make their finny dash down the creek to freedom.
``I guess they ended up in the New River,'' said Ackerman of the fish, not the children. ``I suppose the kids thought it was funny.''
Other comedians considered it great sport to stop their vehicles on 42 at night under Ackerman's business sign, a huge sculpture of a trout hanging near the road, and yank on it until it tumbled to the ground.
Ackerman shrugged, long since having abandoned attempts to understand such behavior. The sign hangs elsewhere now.
It's all part of an attitude that Ackerman probably didn't develop in a sterile lab or a classroom. Somewhere in his veins runs the blood of a farmer. Stuff happens and you deal with it.
The latest has been the floods, a big one in late June and another last month. The hammering water raised all kinds of hell with the pipes, work building, pond and tanks. The pipes, the ones that didn't wash a half-mile down the highway, have been put back together. A backhoe was on the way.
Stuff happens and you deal with it.
Said Ackerman: ``It keeps me off the street and out of the poolroom.''
by CNB