Growing Local: Pickett’s Trout Ranch – Fishful Thinking

Everything is going swimmingly for Steven Pickett in Sequatchie County who owns the area’s leading fish hatchery and sells to Chattanooga’s privately owned restaurants.

With water streaming from the mountain cave by his house, Steve farms over 50,000 fish each year. Business has been so good, that he found himself having to turn customers away this year.

“I am a businessman, I don’t like saying no… but unfortunately this whole summer I have had to. I had no choice - this is a finite resource. I am pretty much tapped out with who I sell to now,” Steve says.

In 2003, Steve ventured into the family-owned business which his father and grandfather had owned in the 60s. Steve rebuilt the deteriorated fish runs and built his house on the mountainous property that had started at about 400 acres in the Cookston family soon after the native Cherokee and Creek had left.

“The Cookstons were married into the Cherokees and the Creeks. Some of them had left for Oklahoma, but my grandmother’s family stayed,” Steve maintains. “She inherited the whole shebang…which was a lot. Used to when you came up the road, it was nothing but Cookstons - all family. It is now subdivided among the children.”

Steve’s parents, Winston and Marsha Pickett, were educators and are now retired. Steve had spent about six months rebuilding everything, but what consumes his time the most is cleaning the fish and getting them ready for market.

“When I get fish out of my runs with a net, I put them in a bucket of water, dump them in the slaughter sink and hit them in the head with a stick, knocking them unconscious. If you don’t ‘knock the flop out’ of them, you can be injured,” Steve chuckles.

He then de-heads and guts the fish (which keeps them from decomposing too quickly) ices them and then moves the fish to the filet station where he butterflys them. “The processing occupies 90 percent of my time - it is very labor intensive. The farming is only 10 percent of it,” Steve says.

With the stream flowing from the cave and into a nearby pond, Steve’s back yard is a wooded mountainside paradise.

“I built this house with the mind to also do my art,” he says. “People say that trout must be my passion. My passion is being successful in something, but if I had to name a personal passion I had about something, it would be wood carving.”

Steve’s wooden art pieces adorn the inside of his cabin. He also has a table display with flint pieces that he found on the property which he believes are still left from his native ancestors.

Steve felt confident that he could run the trout business after having been around it growing up. He knew his water source and had observed his father and grandfather’s business and now lives in the perfect spot for this endeavor.

“There has been plenty of water this year but the last few years had been brutal. Usually about this time, it gets really horrible for me and I will have to run oxygen and circulation pumps. When I first opened up for business it may have been hot, but there was plenty of water so it didn’t really matter,” Steve says.

When the weather is dry and hot, there is little water flowing from the cave and water begins to warm up, which holds less oxygen.

“Trout are cold water fish. If the water gets near 60 degrees, I have problems. I have never seen the cave completely dry - thankfully,” Steve declares.

State certified, Steve has jumped through all the hoops needed to take his business from retail to wholesale selling sustainable seafood.

“The first thing you have to do is know your water source. You can use top water from on the top of a mountain where you know you have plenty of flow, but the only real potential threat with trout would be pesticides (coming from farms who may use them). You have to test your water - particularly near an agricultural area… you might get lucky, you might not. Nobody is above me thankfully. Right behind me is Daus Mountain - which fortunately, is very undeveloped,” Steve says.

“There are probably 100 miles of water that feed this thing. We are not too far from Grundy County and it is not very developed either, so all of our water is generally coming through the mountain stream,” Steve insists.

“Until I mastered the whole hatching and raising process, I had probably lost as much as I had sold,” he says.

Steve had worked as a beer distributor for Kraft Beer and came to know many of the restaurant managers. Through college, he had worked in restaurants and had once owned a barbecue restaurant, so he is familiar with that end of the business when he began selling to privately owned restaurants in Chattanooga.

 “I was motivated to begin the farm because I was tired of working for people. My vision was to have a business to make some money but not to have a really a big aquaculture operation. It took $60,000 to get started to build the runs, plume and the first part of my house - which was going to be a shop or whatever. The house is married to the business,” Steve says.

Steve still has ideas for the future, but taking his new success all in stride. He never dreamed it would take off as fast as it did or that he would have to turn customers away.

With little time to relax in the beautiful surroundings of his home and unable to create with wood very often, Steve does enjoy farming the trout.

“You become attached to what you are raising,” he says and he jokes, “I don’t name all my 50,000 hatchlings, but I do feel a connection with them and I have learned a lot about how smart they really are.”

Beside the fish runs where Steve raises the hatchlings, he points to the nearby pond where trout are happily swimming.

“You would be lucky to catch one of the big ones - these 10 pounders here. They are smart! You see it in their eye - you just can’t fool them, I have tried. I have attempted to catch some of the real monsters out there, with fly fishing. I would even throw live bait right in front of their face …but they just know if they see the line – they are able to hide really well. You can catch them in the right moment when there isn’t a lot of sun and if they don’t see you. The smaller ones are not as experienced - they are easier to catch,” Steve says.

If he needs to catch any of the fish in the pond, there is a drain tile he can pull and catch them with a net, but the fish which are raised for market stay in the runs.

While the trickling brook is peaceful as Steve feeds the hatchlings, it becomes quite tedious in the processing room. After Steve cleans the fish, there is a lot of clean-up of the area in order to follow FDA guidelines.

You will find Pickett’s farm fresh Trout at 212 Market, St. Johns, Alleia’s, Public House, Boathouse, Food Works, Easy Bistro, 1885, Chattanooga Golf and Country Club, Acropolis, Canyon Grill and Elemental. “Enzo’s Market is my only retail – they also carry it in the deli too,” Steve says.

Pickett’s also sells to a market in Knoxville, called Shrimp Dock (with three locations) and to Governor Bill Haslam directly.

With all the demands in business lately, Steve rarely finds time for anything more than gutting trout and cleaning the processing room.

“Today I got to have fun and not spend 10 hours cleaning fish. I got to mow my yard and that was a treat,” he jokes.

Sitting in a hammock on the front porch, Steve contemplates what the best thing about trout farming is. He says simply, “Being here.” He pauses and looks out at the pond, the woods and the cave while listening to the breeze in the trees. “This is why I am in it.”

Though Steve’s home seems to be a vacation spot for most, the work is time consuming and he never has a day off.

“My idea of getting away if I just get sick of it and I need a vacation,” he laughs, “is drinking beer on the beach and …not having to clean fish.”

jen@jenjeffrey.com