Almost every ranch owner or land owner in the local area with a stock tank welcomed the rains and the chance to restock their tanks with an assortment of fish on Friday, Oct. 16.

Thanks to Tommy’s Fish Truck from Romance, Ark.

“You blink your eyes going through town and you’ve probably missed Romance,” said James Irwin, one of two truck drivers for Tommy’s Fish that were at Bee Agricultural Company on Friday morning. Romance is a small town about 40 miles north of Little Rock.

The pond and lake stocking operation provided local tank owners a chance to recover from the summer’s drought that left most of the tanks in the area bone dry and void of fish.

The fish trucks offered various sizes of young channel catfish along with bluegill, bass, crappie and minnows. The minnows were just as popular as the catfish and bass among the several local buyers.

Many voiced the need to get minnows into their tanks in the attempt to help control the emerging mosquito populations.

Art Bazan has a local ranch just outside of Beeville, off CR 345, and was there for a slightly different reason.

“I just deepened and made my tank bigger. My wife said she wanted to go fishing so I had to come get a couple of bags of catfish,” Bazan said.

The two bags each contained 50, 6- to 8-inch channel catfish that in just a few months will provide Mrs. Bazan some entertaining fishing action and a great meal of fresh catfish.

Tommy’s Fish has five routes within Texas and will be back in Beeville in December with another big load of fish for restocking.

The fish business has been booming as the fall rains have all but filled the tanks throughout Texas.

“We stopped in Belton the other day and over 150 buyers were waiting for us,” Irwin said.

So, if you missed them on Friday, mark your calendar for early December and check with Tommy’s Fish as to exactly when they’ll be bringing their finny products back to Bee Agricultural.

The telephone number to the fish farm is 501-796-6349 and is owned by Max Blaxton.