Fish list

By MARALINE KUBIK
VINDICATOR STAFF WRITER
PARADISE -- When Rick Calvin was a boy, he'd idle away his time hunting and trapping muskrat in and around the "bottom ground" of his grandparents' dairy farm.
Today, he farms the wetlands, growing and selling fish for ponds within a 100-mile radius.
In the 1930s, shortly after Calvin's parents, Rosena and Richard Calvin, married, the couple bought a 100-acre asparagus farm from the estate of E.L. Logenecker. The property adjoined the 100-plus-acre farm where Rosena had grown up, said Tim Calvin, Rick's younger brother and partner in the fish farm.
Their dad had grown up on a farm in Columbiana County.
Together, the couple harvested asparagus and raised wheat, corn and oats.
Dairy farming was too time consuming, their son, Tim, explained.
The boys grew up roaming the fields, pastures and wetlands. They hunted, fished and explored every inch of their family farm and grew to love the land.
Paradise
For the boys, it was paradise -- fitting, because the small community in Beaver Township at New Buffalo and Calla roads, near where their farm sits, is named Paradise.
When Rosena's parents, Jacob and Katherine Haus, could no longer work the dairy farm, she and her husband bought it.
The fields there slope and terrace down a hillside and run into acres and acres of wetlands. The top of the hill offers a panoramic view of unspoiled countryside. Blue heron and bald eagles nest in the trees and steal fish from Rick's ponds.
"I don't like to see him carry off a $14 fish," Rick said of the heron, "but I like him. There's nothing more some developers would like than to turn this into a housing development," he added. "That's the last thing I want to happen."
Rick and his brother have an agreement with Mill Creek MetroParks that guarantees the park first right of refusal should the brothers ever decide to sell their property.
In all, the farm consists of about 260 acres, including the wetlands.
Switched from farming
Farming became increasingly difficult for Rick and Tim's father after he slipped off a barn roof in the 1940s and broke his back. "It didn't cripple him, but it gave him problems the rest of his life," Tim said.
That, along with the desire to turn a profit on land that couldn't be used for crops, prompted Richard Calvin to build a pay-to-fish lake in the 1950s. He operated the lake selling passes to fishermen until his death in 1971.
The lake wasn't much of a moneymaker, Tim recalled, and their were few jobs available when he and his brother graduated from Youngstown State University.
Rick earned a degree in business; Tim received a mechanical engineering degree.
So, Tim enlisted in the U.S. Air Force and became a pilot, and Rick turned his attention to the family farm and transforming the pay-to-fish lake and wetlands into a fish farm.
Ponds built
Rick built a series of ponds -- the largest covers about six acres -- and constructed a complete indoor life-support system for incubating, hatching and raising fish.
After Tim suffered a spinal cord injury in a plane crash that made it impossible for him to walk without braces, he returned to the farm to help his brother. Using a wheelchair to make his way around the house where he and his brother grew up, Tim spends most of the busy season -- April and May -- taking phone orders for fish.
Indoor operations for the fish farm are housed in a concrete block building nestled alongside one of the smaller ponds. Inside are eight long stainless steel tanks and several blue fiberglass tubs that resemble backyard swimming pools.
One of the stainless steel tanks serves as a nursery to 100,000 newly hatched walleye. Rick collected 1.5 million walleye eggs from fishermen along the Maumee River a few days earlier. He had to squeeze them out of fish ready to spawn and carry them back to his farm in plastic bags.
The tiny fish, so small they are almost invisible, will remain in the tank only three or four days before being transferred to a pond. A yolk sack provides food for the first few days after they hatch, Rick said, but they need plankton after that.
If he's lucky, 50 percent of the tiny walleye will survive.
They are so small, even insects pose a serious threat.
In another tank, 5,000 yellow perch fingerlings -- fish about the size of a pinkie finger -- are learning to eat fish pellets.
Training the fish
In the pond, fish eat other living organisms, Rick said, so they need to be trained to eat stationary food. The size of the pellets is matched to the size of the fish's eye.
It's noisy inside the building. Aerators pump oxygen into the tanks while a sophisticated system of hoses and drains circulates bubbling pond water through them. Heaters maintain water temperature -- fish can tolerate a change of one degree per hour -- and a generator and alarm system ensure the life-support system continues to operate if the power fails.
Outside, more fiberglass tubs hold fish sorted by variety and size and ready to sell: 3-pound catfish, 1-pound albino catfish, palm-sized yellow perch, largemouth bass, bluegill, Chinese white amur, hybrid bluegill, hybrid striped bass and green sunfish.
Pushing back his sleeve, Rick reaches into one of the tanks and pulls out a yellow perch. The little fish flops its tail against his palm and slides back into the water.
Reaching into another tank, Rick pulls out a much larger fish. It thrashes back and forth, splashing and freeing itself from his grip.
Some fish are sold by the pound, others by the dozen or by the hundred, depending on the customer.
"We'll advise them on the mix and size [of fish] depending on the size of the pond," Rick said of his retail customers. "You have to match size so none prey on the other fish."
A pond also must be able to maintain the fish it houses.
Wholesale dreams
Eventually, Rick said, he hopes to phase out the retail side of his business in favor of wholesaling to other fish farms. Larger orders are more profitable than selling small lots of pond fish, he said.
Paradise Fish Farm has bought and sold fish to fish farms up to 1,300 miles away.
It is open to the public, but advance orders are required.
kubik@vindy.com