alafarmnews

Raymond Swink and his catfish
by Alvin Benn

Raymond Swink is surrounded by thousands of fat cats and nary a one carry a stock portfolio.

They are his little buddies—hand-fed catfish who know when "dad" is getting ready to feed them. When Swink walks across his pier, vibrations from his feet signal his arrival. His voice is another giveaway.

"Not hungry today, are ya?" he yells toward the quiet pond a few yards behind his house in this rural spot of Elmore County. "Come on. Let me know you’re down there. Come on. Where’s my fish? I’m gonna get the food to ya in a minute."

As soon as he lifts his pail and hurls several pounds of feed into the pond, the catfish surface—hungrily gobbling up thousands of little pellets that provide sustenance for them.

Swink, who built his 4-1/2 acre catfish pond four years ago as a hobby, never dreamed it

With bags of catfish feed fore and aft, Raymond Swink heads for his 4-1/2 acre pond in the Watson’s Chapel area of Elmore County.

could turn into a nightmare. That never was his intent. The fish may not be eating him out of house and home, but their ravenous appetites have been putting quite a dent in his wallet.

Swink dumps a big bag of catfish food into his pond.

"I just thought I’d raise catfish and let people come on out to the pond and get some," he said. "Then, I thought that maybe I could sell some. But, it’s gotten out of hand." He said he empties about 450 pounds of feed a week into the pond.

Elmore County Exchange Co-op manager Mack Free knows about Swink’s situation because he’s the one who helped him build the pond and provide the catfish feed.

"I wish there was something that could be done to help him," said Free. "We limed his pond when he got started and have done what we can in other ways, but it looks like he can’t get rid of his fish."

Swink, who feeds his fish more in the summer when their appetites soar, has put them on a diet in recent weeks. They nibble on algae and each other when the pellets aren’t available.

"I try to feed them as much as they want to eat, but I’m just a little ole state retiree and I don’t have that much money to spend on ’em," he said.

For somebody whose first job paid him all of 60 cents an hour when he went to work for the Alabama Highway Department, thousands of dollars a year on catfish food can be an unbelievable sum.

Born in a log house not far from where he lives now, Swink grew up with the knowledge that hard work was the best way to succeed in a life that was as rough as the exterior of his birthplace.

When he was three years old, he lost the tips of two fingers in an accident. He said Dr. Will Ousley was able to sew the fingertips back on and they became almost as good as new.

His family supported itself through a truck farming operation that helped to pay the bills. By the time he got his first full-time job with the highway department in 1953, he knew it was something that beat selling fruit and vegetables from the back of a truck.

It didn’t take long for hundreds of large catfish to pop to the surface to gobble up food dumped into their pond by Raymond Swink.

Swink, 71, didn’t know it at the time, but his highway job would consume most of his working career. When he retired two decades ago, he had worked for the department for more than 30 years.

Frances Swink, left and her daughter, Nora Byrd, prepare lunch at their Elmore County home.

"I worked in the engineering department," he said, as he lit a Winston and took a deep drag. "I was promoted to inspector of asphalt and concrete and worked up in Birmingham for a long time."

Meanwhile, back on the farm, Swink decided to dig a fishpond and see if he could make a splash in that kind of work, too. The digging started in February of 2001 and it wasn’t long before thousands of catfish fingerlings were dumped into the big pond behind the house.

"He started feeding them by hand—loading heavy sacks of catfish food from a supply shed

onto his four-wheeler which took him the few yards to his pond. He then filled several pails and tipped them into the water.

It was a routine that became part of his daily existence. The catfish seemed to become accustomed to feeding time, too. They couldn’t wait for him to call them to the lunch table—the water table, that is.

About 18 months after Swink launched his "hobby," the cats had grown to a suitable size and the family found itself with plenty of fish to eat.

It wasn’t long, however, that they had grown far beyond the size that most Alabama commercial catfish farmers prefer. His fish weigh up to 10 pounds. Commercial fish usually weigh about two pounds or so.

A couple of years after his pond was built, Swink dug a second, smaller one not far away. He said he did it because the water table drops during the year and he thought a backup pond would be useful. Before he realized it, he had spent a considerable amount on the second pond.

"Shoot, I spent $1,000 for concrete on a spillway," he said. "It seems I just kept spending more and more money on them catfish."

The result? He wound up with two ponds where thousands of catfish happily splash around day and night and wait for Swink to feed them.

Cattle farmers experience the same thing as they dump bales of hay in their pastures while their cows amble behind, waiting to dig in. The only difference is the location—land instead of water.

Swink may be just a "little ole state retiree," but he’s also a humanitarian with an extensive collection of baseball caps and a desire to see things live as long as possible.

"I don’t want them to die, but it’s getting too expensive for me to buy the feed to keep them alive," he said, as he looked toward his big pond and watched as remnants of the day’s lunch vanished into the gullets of his catfish.

Swink gives away some of his fish to the needy and sells some to friends who want larger amounts. He charges them $1-a-pound. What he’d really like is for somebody who runs a processing plant to drive on over to rural Elmore County and collect "a mess of fish."

"I’ll let ’em have as much as they want for $1 a pound, too," he said. "There are tons of catfish in those ponds. I don’t have any doubts it would be worth it for them to come over and drop their nets in. They’ll go back with enough fish to make a nice profit."

Commercial catfish farmers who were contacted said it wouldn’t be economically feasible to dispatch a refrigerated truck to Swink’s pond. They said the fish are too big for their needs and the trip would, in effect, be a waste of money.

Swink doesn’t like to brag, but he’s convinced that his hand-fed catfish are better than anything folks can buy at a restaurant or supermarket.

"They are delicious," says his wife, Anne, as she prepared hamburgers for lunch. "They don’t have that strong fish smell when you cook them, either."

The Swinks, who have been married for 48 years, live in a perfect place for their children and grandchildren. The kids can’t wait to come over to fish.

"We’ll eat catfish every few weeks," he said. "All it takes is a walk to the pond and we get whatever we need."

Anne Swink said she uses peanut oil to fry her homegrown catfish. She said it helps give the fish "just the right taste."

Word of Swink’s catfish pond has become known in and around Elmore County and Free said dropping by at feeding time is a "sight to see."

"The fish just waylay the food as soon as he dumps it into the pond," he said. "Some fin others as they all rush to get to it. They’ll just roll over on each other."

Recreational fishing may be the answer to Swink’s dilemma. Swink knows about that option, but he’s also worried about liability factors, especially the insurance premiums.

"I can just let them die by not feeding them, give them away or break the dam and let them go down the creek and into Lake Martin," Swink said. "I really don’t want to have to do that. Right now I just don’t know what to do."

Anyone with an answer to his situation can reach him at (334) 541-2442.

Alvin Benn is a freelance writer from Selma.