By the time I get to Daisytown she'll be rising

Trout Oil is on the rise. Got a late start working the bugs out of insulating and heating the new Fish House. It wasn't intended for use in this manner, but our summer heat index isn't long or hot enough to give us the turnaround time from the raw fish start to finished prime oil. R&D was a work in progress for this kind of volume of 100 plus buckets at a time. We got it now.

It has been in the mid 20's and 30's most nights. Not much would begin rendering from solar heat until mid to late May at best. Another week or so this batch will all be mature and ready for a new load.




Our ambient avg. rendering room temperature.



Our circulating air temperature.



A view of our setup and bucket rotation positioning



Heat source and fan set up.



Black Gold ready for siphoning.

You make so easy Bob you take all the fun out of it

I still remember the smell of the cardboard floor covering. You've probably changed it since I was there in '09 . . . .

When you depend upon good consistent pure raw material ingredients you need to make most of them yourself. At least those that you can. Seth, you get to see a little preview of what is ahead of you as you grow. It will solve many of your challenges in the years to come. It is a constant state of evolution as you will experience.

It takes dedication and a little MacGyver thrown in to keep you going for a few years at a time with some key ingredients. It's all work and stink but well worth the effort. There is considerable R&D involved also constantly.

I have changed the cardboard floor once Tracy just a couple years ago. It lasts pretty good. It is a project to cover 1800 sq. ft.. The formulation area where the mixing is done takes the biggest hit obviously. I know our new shipping boxes "smell" just due to being in the same facility. Hard to avoid that.

Very nice hot room you have built their Bob. Sure beats waiting for sunshine & longer days. Faster and cleaner also!

Thanks for showing us that Bob.

Should convince many folks that you are the real deal and trappers can use your lure with confidence.

I prefer a low profile and I am basically a loner. Just turned out that way since I was young.

I like to give a little behind the scenes tutorial every now and then. I hope to give those that enjoy formulation a little insight into a commercial operation. This is just one segment on how you scale up to ensure that you can meet your volume needs and some surplus inventory is always good.

We used to work up 10 > 20 buckets at a time. Now we need hundreds of buckets of raw materials just to keep up each year. It can take many months or a year or more at times to work up that much fish oil, so if nature can't provide what we need you have to improvise. I should have figured out this system years ago. What a game changer.

We are getting more bears in our area all the time. We have already had some visits, so we needed to get a protected facility. Next, we are going to need some type of steel grids on our ground level windows. I don't want to think about one getting into our production building.




I guess this tells me that I am on the right track with a very good working room temperature. Notice the blow out bubble at the bottom of the thermometer.

I noticed that my digital thermometer is difficult to read at times as well.

Bob, I was wondering how You prep the fish for the rendering process? Is it worthwhile too grind the whole fish before rendering?
Grinding will probably speed up the rendering process. Thanks.

No, I render all the skeletons and heads once the filets are removed. I get lots of morts which are adult fish that die off and I chop them with a hatchet. If you grind them it doesn't seem to render as well. All the fish paste settles and it won't release the oil up thru all the fish parts as easily it seems. You can try that but I find it works much better the way I use them. Once you start a batch never stir or shake the bucket or container.

Bob, very interesting. So it is better to leave some space for the oil to move! Thanks!

The oil will release naturally from the parts if it is good fish to work with and the right temps. Some fish batches begin releasing oil in a few days in the right conditions. I have drawn oil off in 8-11 days before. That first released oil is very golden in color. The oil that has to work overtime is very dark. I have seen red colored oil as well. I have some of that red oil now that I can see when I skim down thru the cream that rises on the oil when its forming underneath in some batches.

Also, when you grind the fish, the parts will be smaller. Much of fine flesh breaking down will rise instead of sinking with the bones / scales and tend to blend in with the rising oil making it more difficult to draw the pure clean oil off without excess debris.

Then you will have several straining / filtering processes to clean the oil up if you can. It may turn out milky which won't hurt the quality. It just won't look pure. For consumer use that isn't a problem.