Grandfather Trout Farm: An Anglers’ Destination for 22 Years
Story by Sam Calhoun
Two hundred and ten days straight. That’s how long Bill Wilkinson, 22-year owner of the Grandfather Trout Farm, worked after the hurricanes of 2004 blew through the High Country.
“I’m working more now than when I was in my 30s,” he laughed.
But despite the work—he has operated one of the largest commercial trout farms in the Southeast for more than two decades—and despite having to rebuild his business on the bank of the Watauga River twice after destructive floods, the 59-year-old Wilkinson still greets every visitor with a smile and the soft-spoken query, “You want to go fishing?”
Except for Christmas, hardly a day has gone by in the last 22 years that Wilkinson hasn’t baited hooks, set lines and introduced first-time fishermen to the wonders of catching a trout that they could eat later that night.
On a humid Tuesday afternoon, dozens of determined anglers lined Wilkinson’s ponds, often stopping to rest on a bench and share a conversation. But according to Wilkinson, “this is dead,” referring to the crowd that day. Just last Saturday, his 4.5-acre trout farm across from the entrance to the Town of Seven Devils was a destination for close to 175 people.
Wilkinson has seen four other large area trout farms go out of business—Howard’s Creek Trout Farm off Highway 194, the Payday Trout Farm on Shull’s Mill, the Racket Creek Trout Farm in the Globe and the Little Switzerland Trout Farm. Whether due to floods or slow business, others failed where he succeeded.
Now, after rebuilding his trout farm twice, Wilkinson’s business has outgrown most commercial trout growers in the area and he purchases his fish from Brevard, NC and Hampton, Tenn. He divides them among three delicately cut ponds that trace the curve of the Watauga River. Multiple dams intake freshwater and replace it about an acre downstream.
Here, beginner to expert anglers only pay for what they catch and no license is needed. Everyone is assured of catching a coveted rainbow trout—a brown trout if they’re lucky—and visitors can clean the fish themselves or have one of Wilkinson’s three full-time employees do it. Guests can have their catch packed in ice to take home and cook or smoked for free on location.
His trout sells for $4.25 per pound and $0.50 to clean. “It’s still lower than a grocery store,” said Wilkinson, who pointed out that grocery stores generally charge $9.95 per pound for filleted trout. If the trout farm filets your trout, you’re guaranteed to get 60 percent of the meat or maybe 55 percent “depending on how sharp the knife is,” joked Wilkinson.
Wilkinson supplies the rod, reels, bait, towels, buckets, ice and bags at no extra charge. He has recently installed a Webcam on the premises so grandmas and grandpas can catch a glimpse of their grandchildren catching their first fish, in case mom and dad forgot the camera.
How the Grandfather Trout Farm Came To Be…
Thirty-two years ago, Wilkinson moved from his hometown of Charlotte to manage rental properties in Seven Devils for his father. The year was 1975 and Wilkinson had been a discothèque owner in the Queen City.
“You’ve got to remember, it was the 1970s,” laughed Wilkinson.
He was only supposed to stay for a summer season, “but I’ve been here ever since,” he said. Pretty soon, he bought his father’s rental property and took a job in the food business at Hawksnest.
Around the same time, Wilkinson convinced two investors that a trout farm was a viable and lucrative option and in 1983, Wilkinson and his partner, Mike Hayes, bought the trout farm property and built the facility in a year.
Their first year was busy and business began to boom. But after feeling the business out a bit, Wilkinson found out, as many business people do, that he couldn’t make any money if he had a partner. So in 1986, Wilkinson bought out Hayes’s interest and the trout farm was his.
For 11 years, Wilkinson dedicated his summers to the trout farm and spent his winters at Hawksnest. When Leonard Cottom took over Hawksnest in the 1990s, Cottom decided to change the way the food service was run and Wilkinson decided to stay down the mountain for good. That year, the trout farm went year-round—the way it has been for the last 13 years.
The Hurdles of Owning a Business Next to a River…
Around the same time that Wilkinson turned his business into a year-round affair, disaster struck. It was January 1995 and the High Country received 18 inches of rain in 12 hours. The torrential rains demolished the ski slopes and totally washed away the dike that separated the Watauga River from the Grandfather Trout Farm.
“Everything we had was washed away—the fish washed down the river,” said Wilkinson. “You could say I stocked the river pretty well.”
Wilkinson sat, stunned, and watched the river flow straight through his biggest pond. At first, he used a casting net to gather his fish as they floated away, but a wildlife officer told him that was illegal. When his friends came out to try to catch the fish and replace them in the ponds, the wildlife officer spoiled that party as well.
Wilkinson lost 8,000 pounds of fish and spent 21 days rerouting the river back to its original track and rebuilding his dike (making it 4 times thicker) and ponds, with the help of a small business loan.
But his flood problems weren’t over. It was like a recurring nightmare when Hurricanes Frances and Ivan roared through the High Country in 2004, but this time, the damage wasn’t the Watauga River’s fault.
Seven Devils residents and business owners had asked the state for years to clean out the culverts that carried runoff from Valle Creek in Seven Devils, but aside from moving a solitary tree stump, the state did nothing.
When the hurricane rains fell, the Watauga River surged outward, causing no harm, but the culverts backed up, water flowed into Wilkinson’s property from Highway 105 and it all washed away again. Once again, he lost close to 8,000 pounds of fish, but some of his dams held—saving key parts of the trout farm. The floods stripped the carpet off his “putter-putt” course and left his water intake 5 feet above water level.
But he didn’t give up. Grants came in from the State Department of Agriculture and he rebuilt for the second time. Yet, because of the financial strain, Wilkinson had to run the farm himself for 210 days straight without a vacation.
As a testament to his dedication and passion for the farm, the facility today looks as if nothing happened. His dikes are covered in grass and his dams look solid, but boulders line his intake from the river, assuring that he will never run out again.
Within his landscaped grounds, a gem mine and trough filled with precious gemstones occupy one corner, while the vacated “putter-putt” course is located across the ponds.
Watching the Watauga River for Over Two Decades…
One of the most important parts of Wilkinson’s daily operations is gauging his water intake and outtake from the Watauga River and making sure the levels in his ponds don’t disturb the natural levels of the rivers.
Wilkinson has noticed that that Watauga River is averaging one-third of the levels that it had when he first opened.
“Water flow has diminished considerably year after year,” said Wilkinson, who blames the decrease on increased development and housing and the surge of golf courses. “They keep pumping the water out of the ground.”
Because of these levels, Wilkinson has to inventory less fish because there’s less oxygen to keep the fish healthy. “New development is sucking us dry,” he added. “It could be disastrous. In 10 years, there may not be enough water to have a viable trout farm,” he said.
And then there’s the heat.
“This is the hottest July I’ve experienced with the least amount of rain,” said Wilkinson. When water temperatures rise above 70 degrees, trout begin to die.
And as hemlocks are lost from the hemlock wooly adelgid, the crucial canopy that shades the trout in the rivers will be lost as well and more fish may die.
Bill Wilkinson, the Politician…
While spending so much time at the trout farm, it may be hard to believe that Wilkinson does anything else. But that’s far from the truth.
More than a decade ago, Wilkinson made front-page news in The Mountain Times for climbing a tree to save it from being cut down. Subsequently, the Town of Seven Devils put a restraining order on him, that in turn, convinced him to run for town council. He was elected and currently sits on the Seven Devils Town Council, is vice chair of the Seven Devils Board of Adjustment and is on the Seven Devils Water & Steep Slope Committee. In the past, he has served as chair of the Tourism Development Authority of Seven Devils, as vice chair of the Seven Devils Planning Board, as chair of the Seven Devils Board of Adjustment and as vice chair of the Seven Devils Safety Committee.
As for his business, Wilkinson plans to continue doing what he has been doing for the past 22 years until the river makes him stop.
And, by the way, he recently took a vacation—four days off last April after working one and a half years without one. He went scuba diving in the Bahamas. He didn’t go fishing.
Grandfather Trout Farm is located at 10767 Highway 105-South across from the entrance to the Town of Seven Devils. It is open every day of the year except Christmas from 10:00 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. in the summer and from 11:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. or 12:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m. in the winter. For more information, call 828-963-5098 or click to www.grandfathertroutfarm.com.
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