The Truth About Dale Hollow Smallmouth

In a perfect world, every post we made would be sunshine and roses, in line with that old saying, “If you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all.” Unfortunately, we don’t live in a perfect world. The apostle Paul made a point not once but many times of calling out false teachers and in general anyone who opposed his ministry; if you have read those scriptures you know he said some pretty not-nice things about those people. Because there are dishonest, unethical people in the pond business, and because we want you, our customer or potential customer, to know the truth and not be misled by those people, there will be occasions when we have to call out untruths for what they are.

We were the first private hatchery in the U.S. to raise Dale Hollow smallmouth. I made blog posts on our website in the fall of 2020 talking about the unprecedented growth rate our first crop was having. We started with eight fish that I and my cousin caught via hook-and-line angling over four days of fishing Dale Hollow in March of 2020; seven of those fish were between 13” and 15”, and one was 22.5”. We stocked those fish into a 3/4-acre pond that had been prepared just for them at our fish farm; when those fish were introduced to the pond, it had nothing but fathead minnows in it. We didn’t expect the bass to spawn that year because they were stocked into the pond the last week of March, toward the end of the typical spawning season for smallmouth. But then I was walking by that pond one day in October of that year and saw a dead 4” smallmouth, so I knew that they had spawned. We seined a couple weeks later, and in addition to our original broodstock we found about 70 young-of-year smallmouth. The smalllest of those fish measured 4”; six of them were 10” or better. The fastest growth rate we have found in any scientific literature on smallmouth talks about a few exceptional fish in a couple lakes in Washington state reaching 4” at the end of their first growing season; our best fish were growing at 2.5 times that rate.

So we made a blog post on our website touting that growth rate. A little over a year later, a fish seller in Kansas began raising Dale Hollow smallmouth. It’s safe to say he got the idea from us; he had made multiple posts on an online forum months prior to that stating he was getting his smallmouth from a northern state; then suddenly he switched midstream and began bragging about how he was going to raise Dale Hollow smallmouth and was paying locals at the lake to catch them for him.

At that point, we didn’t like that individual, but at least he wasn’t misleading the public. Now he is, because a few months ago he made a post on that same forum claiming to be the only hatchery with Dale Hollow smallmouth. He’s not the only one; he’s not even the first one; and he’s not even being honest about where he got the idea.

We are the original growers of Dale Hollow smallmouth. And unlike some people, we’re also honest and tell the truth.