Life as a Salmon Farmer

Well that’s what I like to call myself anyway. I am currently working for the Delphi Fishery, which is a part of the Delphi Lodge. In the spring, summer, and fall the lodge primarily functions as a fishing lodge. Guest from around the world come to spend time fly fishing for salmon in the renowned lakes and rivers of the Delphi Estate. In the winter the lodge and cottages are used to host house parties for anyone who wants to rent the place out. It is a great get-away and I have yet to see a guest who isn’t smiling and having a great time. As for me, I am doing general work for the fishery itself.
I start off every morning by checking the 12 holding tanks of salmon. I check to make sure everything looks to be in order and when one of our friends goes belly up (dead) I scoop 'em out and dispose of them. I also check the system filters and make sure the food is being rationed properly. The morning routine is fun and usually followed by a tea break. After break me and the lads, Lawrence, Giles, Rodek, David, and several other stand ins go about the day’s work. This can be a range of things from plucking birds from the recent hunts, cleaning out streams so the local sea trout can make it up the rivers to spawn, hauling rubbish from the lodge, and every day we clean the nets and go netting. This has to be the most fun of the job. We take nets and go fishing in several different locations on the two lakes. We almost always do the stream on Finlough as the salmon wait here to head up the stream to spawn next to the hatchery where they were raised. We catch anywhere from 10 to 50 salmon per netting. We also only keep those salmon that have their back fin docked which means they are a Delphi hatchery raised fish. All wild salmon are released back into the waters. We then put them in a transfer tank and head back to the hatchery. We separate the males and females and also check for id tags. We kill any salmon that currently have tags as they are a non-native species that is no longer needed in the system. The first couple of weeks of December will bring a new set of jobs as the salmon will then be ready to spawn.
Once they are ready to spawn we will harvest the eggs from the females, milk the males, and start the next generation of Delphi salmon. It should be a lot of fun and I am looking forward to it. At this point I know way too much about the lives of salmon, but I don’t intend to quit learning until my six weeks here is finished. I will let you know more about the process as I learn.