How Goldfish Were Harvested
Farmers Used Ponds to Make Extra Money Raising Goldfish for Sale
© Jim Rada
Jun 8, 2008
Early goldfish farming was relatively simple. In the spring, farmers stocked their ponds with breeder goldfish. The goldfish reproduced and the young grew through the summer. Feeding the fish was kept at a minimum. Generally, some form of ground grain, like wheat middlings or ground corn, was the food of choice. The breeders were kept in the deepest ponds, since these ponds provided a good water supply over the winter.
Harvesting Goldfish
In the fall, the goldfish were harvested. Buyers would come driving trucks full of fish cans in which to carry the fish, or farmers would ship the fish to the buyers. A single farmer might ship thousands of fish each day during the harvest. During the 1904 harvest season, goldfish farmer M.H. Hoke shipped about six thousand goldfish each day harvested from his ponds near Walkersville, Md. A 1921 Catoctin Clarion (Oct. 20, 1921) describes a goldfish harvest this way:
“A sluice gate was slightly raised; at the end of the sluice a large wire basket encloses everything that comes through and a small dip net transfers the fish to buckets, whence they are taken to the sorting room. Here they are emptied about a quart at a time on a table with a sloping galvanized iron top, and as they slide by, four men separate the gold fish from the uncolored gold fish, the tadpoles, crabs, frogs, pond bass, and various other pond inhabitants. The gold fish are put into large floats and afterwards, by the same process above are sorted into their different sizes.”
Once the crop was harvested, the farmers would drain their ponds (except for the ones with the breeders) and dry them over the winter as a means of sterilizing them.
Farming Problems
Raising goldfish was not without problems. As the ponds became older there was an increase in parasites. Another problem involved the weather. Ponds located on streams could flood, sending hundreds of fish, and dollars, into the stream. Crayfish were said to bore holes in the sides of man-made ponds, which could cause them to leak and eventually break. In 1904, one of Richard Kefauver’s Middletown ponds broke and he lost an estimated $700 in goldfish (Frederick Evening News, January 30, 1904). Predators also presented constant danger. Fish cranes, hawks, kingfishers and water snakes all had a taste for goldfish.
Finally, some goldfish in every crop (perhaps 40 percent, in goldfish farmer Ernest Tresselt’s estimation) simply did not turn orange. They remained the dull, muddy color of wild goldfish.
“Those fish would be sold as bait fish. They were called Baltimore minnows,” Tresselt said. He said that when the county’s goldfish breeders began more selective breeding of goldfish, the percentage of goldfish that turned the proper color dramatically increased and “Baltimore minnows” disappeared.
