Private Fishing Club

I ran into the entrepreneur of entrepreneurs the other day and I need to tell you about him. First of all Owen Orndorff is a lawyer and he’s in the energy business. Second he has a cattle ranch in Owyhee County, Idaho. But the cattle ranch is only a part of his business equation. He has stored water on the ranch in huge reservoirs and the reservoirs are full of trout. So he sells memberships to a fishing club and the people who join thoroughly enjoy themselves. “It’s a sideshow but a fairly interesting one. It’s a cattle ranch and especially in Owyhee County, there is not a lot of well water. You can’t drill a well and find water to irrigate with. So, in the mid 80s, we built a series of reservoirs and we can trap a lot of water. We have had some luck raising the biggest trout in Southwest Idaho. Maybe there’s something bigger but I don’t know about it. That led to selling, about 20 years ago, a fishing club which grew and continues to grow. So it provides wonderful irrigation water and at the same time, recreation, a source of profit selling memberships.

Owen says that the water is very alkaline which produces heavy vegetation and attracts insects which the fish love.