Troutlodge began selling fish in 1945

Ed McLeary visits with long-time friends, Maxine Lylery, left, and Marina Romary during a picnic at the Troutlodge Fish Hatchery, located along Rocky Ford Creek on Sept. 10.

by Dennis L. Clay<br> Special to Herald
| September 23, 2010 1:00 PM

MOSES LAKE - This is the first of a two-part series about the

fish-farm giant, Troutlodge, and its founder, Ed McLeary.

When a young man starts a new business his expectations, of

course, are high: It will be a lifetime endeavor, the business will

allow me to make enough money to raise a family and I will be proud

of my efforts.

MOSES LAKE - This is the first of a two-part series about the fish-farm giant, Troutlodge, and its founder, Ed McLeary.

When a young man starts a new business his expectations, of course, are high: It will be a lifetime endeavor, the business will allow me to make enough money to raise a family and I will be proud of my efforts.

The anticipations may be high, but seldom do first-time businessmen establish a company as a young man, develop it into a top-of-the-line industry and continue working for the company into the age of 93.

Ed McLeary is such a man.

As a flight instructor at Gonzaga University during World War II, Ed became acquainted with Ken Drew, who was one of his students and a fish man from Montana.

Ken was raising fish eggs in the basement of a house he rented while he was attending flight school. Ed rented space, as an apartment, in the same basement. He helped Ken and his wife with the eggs, which were sold to fish hatcheries. After about 18 months, the two pilots decided to go into business together.

Besides raising fish eggs, they also traded live small fish to the Colville Indians for brook trout eggs from the reservation lakes. These transactions inspired the pair to contact Billy Clapp, who was one of their customers, and eventually lease the property on Rocky Ford Creek, near Soap Lake.

In the beginning the two concentrated on selling live trout to restaurants and grocery stores. They also allowed people to fish in their ponds, charging them by the length of the fish, by the inch.

"Of course people wanted big, long fish, which allowed us to make more money," Ed said.

When Clapp had the hatchery, he had been hatching the fish from the eggs sent by Ed and Ken and planting them in Rocky Ford Creek.

"So there were resident Kamloops trout in Rocky Ford Creek," Ed said. "My first impression of the Ephrata and Soap Lake area was less than favorable, I figured a person had to be nuts to live in such an area, it being so hot, over 100 degrees, but a month later I was living here in a trailer and using an outhouse."

The population at the hatchery site was not just fish, as there were many more mosquitoes and other critters, according to Ed.

"The first year I was here, I killed 65 rattlesnakes," Ed said.

There wasn't much money coming from the hatchery in the beginning, so Ed made a living by teaching ground school to people wanting to become private pilots.

"I would travel to the small towns around, such as Wilbur, Almira and Hartline," Ed said. "They would get half a dozen people together and I would go up there in the evening for four hours and then come home, get a little sleep, get up a 5 in the morning to feed the fish."

Teaching ground school helped immensely by providing the money to live on and survive, not only by charging for the school, which the farmers paid for with the GI Bill, but Ed also had the concession to charge for the books necessary to complete the course.

"At first we only had fish eggs available during a short time of the year," Ed said. "Our production wasn't much and times were tough."

The pair graduated to the point of separation. They had a buy/sell agreement in case such a situation became necessary.

"Kenny, it would be best if we separated," Ed told his partner one day.

Ken asked if Ed wanted to buy or sell and he decided to buy, so a price was decided upon and Ed became the sole owner. Ken still owned his fish business in Montana. The pair remained good friends after the transaction and after Troutlodge began producing more eggs, Ed paid Ken off in fish eggs.

Ken died at an airport, while preparing to deliver fish eggs. Ken's son had been making boxes for Ed to deliver fish eggs. At the time of his death, Ken owed Ed a considerable amount of money. The son wanted to settle the matter, so he paid off Ed in fish boxes, by charging Ed only half the price with the rest going for toward the amount owed.

"After we began producing more and more fish eggs, we developed methods of extending the sales season, by getting fish that spawned earlier and later," Ed said. "We found some springs with colder water nearby, circulated our water through those springs and kept fish in the cooler water, so they would spawn later, thus extending the season when we would have eggs available."

All of a sudden, Troutlodge was making money in what was considered the fish-egg off-season. This was because Troutlodge had eggs that people wanted at a time of the year when the eggs had not been available before.

"In the 1950s, we were shipping fish eggs all over the nation," Ed said. "We shipped them by railway express at first, then the DC-3s came back from the war and began serving smaller airports. Fortunately, Ephrata was one of them."

There were a lot of blood plasma cases left over from World War II and Troutlodge used those cases, which were readily available, to ship the eggs, with a moist covering and surrounded by ice.

Next week: Troutlodge grows into a worldwide industry.