It’s approaching the “busy season” at Hardin’s Fish just south of Calhoun City where Jimmy Hardin will begin working longer hours and delivering fish to seemingly all corners of the U.S.
“I?don’t mind the hours,” Hardin said. “This business is in my blood.”
The business began when Hardin’s father, Charlie Hardin, expanded an eight acre fishing lake that was built in 1946 to a 20 acre lake in 1954. The purpose of the expansion was to have a good supply of water for irrigation to row cropland below.
When Grenada Lake was formed in 1948, it became a prime fishing destination and required a large supply of bait, especially minnows. Charlie Hardin saw the opportunity and stocked his 20 acre lake in February of 1955 with Red Fin minnows that began reproducing in March.
“There was not a commercial feed available at that time so my dad used cottonseed meal and Hog shorts (which was a wheat brand) mixed in a #3 tub about half and half,” Jimmy Hardin said. “We used a boat with a 3½ hp Scott Atwater outboard motor to distribute the feed around the lake.”
The minnows were ready by June, and they used an aluminum tank with eight perforated containers with lids that each held about 1,500 minnows to deliver to the area bait shops. Originally the minnows were sized and counted by hand, which was more labor intensive.
“In the late 50’s we began to grade with grader boxes with different sized rods in the bottom that would let the small minnows through and hold the larger ones,” Hardin said. “We then began to run counts on each batch and sell them by weight. The crappie minnows usually were six to eight pounds per thousand, and the bass or trout line minnows were 10-12 pounds per thousand or larger.”
The business grew quickly and the Hardins began building lakes in all the hollows on the farm, eventually finishing 10.
“I finished college at Mississippi State in 1963 and came back to the farm, which my dad had incorporated and named Rainbow Ranch, Inc.,” Hardin said.
“After researching the different strains of minnows available we determined that the Golden shinner minnows handled and transported easier because they would not jump as much and injure themselves, that would cause fungus to grow and a heavy mortality rate for the producer and the bait shops,” he said.
The minnow route expanded in the 60’s to include 35 bait shops around Grenada, Enid and Sardis reservoirs.
By the mid 60’s the Hardins were also producing channel catfish fingerlings and some food fish. The first fingerlings produced on the farm were spawned wild, meaning they would put some brood channel catfish into a clean lake (free of other fish which would eat the small catfish that are about a half inch long at first) and put the spawning containers (10 gallon milk cans) for them to go in and spawn the eggs. Once the eggs were spawned, the male catfish runs the female catfish out and protects the eggs that usually hatch in about seven days in water temperature that is about 78 to 80 degrees.
“In 1966 we installed our first mechanical hatchery – a paddlewheel,” Hardin said. “We had quarter-inch mesh baskets to put the eggs in that we would grabble out of the brood fish lakes. When the eggs hatched they would go through the openings to the bottom of the hatching trough, and we would use a siphon hose and gently put them into a bucket to transfer to a vat. After about five days we would begin feeding the tiny fish a feed high in protein for usually about 10 days. Then they were transferred to a clean rearing lake that had to be free of all other fish and water bugs.”
The Hardins were among the first to produce catfish fingerlings, enabling them to market to several states – Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Florida, Indiana, Texas, Louisiana, Minnesota, Kentucky and Tennessee.
“The fish that were shipped to Minnesota were flathead catfish that we produced for several years,” Hardin said. “They were used for research by a university and some were stocked in lakes and reservoirs.”
In 1981, Jimmy Hardin saw the opportunity to produce game fish (bass and bream) to stock new lakes. At that time, state fish hatcheries were supplying some of those needs free of charge, but not enough.
“It was hard competition going against the government that was giving fish away, but we did,” Hardin said.
There’s also a constant battle with critters. Raccoons and cats were frequent visitors to the large fish-filled vats, but wire mesh and then electric fences lining the vats curtailed those problems.
Cottonmouths (water moccasins) are a different issue.
“We’ve killed some almost five feet long out here,” Hardin said. “That’s just part of it with an operation like this.”
When Jimmy Hardin’s brother Charles retired from farming the family’s land in 1985, they agreed to lease the property, and Jimmy Hardin went to work as parts manager at Pryor Implement Co. a local John Deere dealer. He continued the fish operation on the side, with a lot of help from his wife Robbie.
He retired in 2007 from John Deere, but continues to run Hardin’s Fish.
“I’m still enjoying it,” Hardin said. “Robbie still helps me some, but I enjoy it being a one-man operation. That way when something goes wrong, I know who to blame.”
Hardin still supplies Coppernose bluegill bream, native bluegill bream, Redear (shellcracker, strawberry and chinquapin) bream, largemouth black bass, Florida largemouth black bass, F1 largemouth black bass (a cross between the native bass and the Florida bass), channel catfish, hybrid catfish (true cross between the channel catfish and the blue catfish), fathead (tuffie) minnow, golden shinner minnow, grass carp (moss eaters) and black nose crappie (black stripe down the top of the back).
Hardin has delivered fish as far as South Florida and Lawrence, Kansas in recent years.
“I’ve delivered fish to Super Bowl winners, brain surgeons, authors, all kinds of people,” he said. “That’s the true reward of this job, getting to meet a lot of really nice people from all walks of life.”