Started by Thomas Edison and Robbie Lou "Granny
Fish" Sells,
Nut Cave Trout Farm opened for business in
August of 1964. The trout farm is now operated by one of their grandsons, Jason
Sells and his wife Brittney.
The cave is our source of all of the water
used on the farm. About 1,650 gallons of water flow out of the cave per minute.
We hatch our trout here. We buy the
eggs already fertlized from the state of Washington. We usually hatch about 80,000 trout a year in two
hatchings. One in March and one in November. Not all of them make it to selling age though. In 2007, during the terrible
drought and extremely hot summer, we lost all of our hatch. Since then we have had an abbreviated fishing schedule and
had to raise our prices. So far in 2009 we hatched only 25,000 and during the hot dry weather in June we lost about
15,000. The rest recovered after temperatures cooled and rain began to fall in July. We are praying for a cool
rest of the summer. It takes trout about a year from hatching to reach 1 pound.
Our biggest predator on our fish is the Great
Blue Heron. We also have some problems with Mink, Coons, and stray house cats.
During the summer we also have catfish. We
don't rasie the catfish here. We buy them from L. C. Carey Fisheries in Camden, TN.
One of our most asked questions is, What
do you do with all the guts from the cleaned fish? We give them to a man that makes compost out of them.
We are not affiliated with the Tennessee
Wildlife Resources Agency. Most of our business comes from families coming to catch fish. We sell trout to Granny Fishes Resturant.
While we share the property with Granny Fishes
Resturant, we are two seperate businesses. The resturant was opened on April 1, 1984, by the son and daughter-in-law of Tom
and Robbie Sells. The resturant is now operated by Shane Starnes. He is the nephew of Robbie "Granny Fish" Sells. Sadly, Granny
Fish passed away in August of 2008.
