SAGUACHE–Trout has been added to the list of premium products that are being raised in the San Luis Valley thanks to Frontier Trout Ranch of Saguache.

Established in December 2013, the ranch is a provider of premium fresh fish for the food service industry and now distributes its product to some of the top restaurants in Colorado, including the Broadmoor.

The land and water that the ranch consists of served as a trout hatchery as early as the 1940s and by the 1960s was raising more the 500,000 trout annually. The ranch relies on an artesian well for its supply of water, which is an essential part of the operations’ ability to raise clean, healthy fish in a sustainable environment.

The 163-acre, family-run, all-natural trout ranch produces rainbow trout and other specialty trout. The operation has also blended tried and true aquaculture techniques with the sustainability of a single-source, closed-water system in order to grow superior, fresh, natural fish.

Kermit Krantz, who has been hailed as a pioneer in modern clean, sustainable fish farming techniques, manages frontier Trout Ranch. He welcomed the opportunity to start a new venture following a career in finance and never looked back. “I built it up from scratch,” Krantz said. The ranch has since been hailed as Colorado’s premier source of trout for the food service industry. Krantz has become trusted throughout the industry and recognized as an expert in his field.

Frontier Trout Ranch has also created a trout farming niche market through the incorporation of a closed system design that allows for optimum quality control. The product is monitored from egg to dinner plate, thus creating a fresh, natural, healthy food source for the health-conscious consumer. The ranch hatches tens of thousands of eggs per week and raises each fish for 18 months before harvesting.

The process allows for the production of market-ready fish raised in an ecosystem full of natural food sources such as crawfish, shrimp, salamanders, minnows and snails. This native environment is designed to be free of pollutants in order to provide the trout with firmness and a true flavor via their symbiotic relationship with the other species with which they share the water. “We raise a premium, organic product,” said Krantz.

Shamrock Foods of Denver serves as the distributor for the ranch. The trout are harvested at 8 am., and delivered fresh to customers on the same day. After the fish are processed, all byproduct is purchased back by Frontier Trout Ranch for a bio footprint of approximately four hours. The byproduct is then ground and composted to develop a high-grade fish hydrolysate for use by commercial farmers in the San Luis Valley and beyond.

Frontier Trout Ranch is now focusing on improvements such as increased production efficiencies, including increasing rearing densities, improving recirculation technologies, developing superior strains of fish for improved growth, controlling maturation and gender, improving diets, and reducing phosphorus concentrations of effluents.

Krantz is also looking ahead to new opportunities and hoping to develop the ranch into destination where guest can have a premier culinary experience. He is proud of the product that he and his family raise.