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If the forest smells of mushrooms, then at OJSC "Rybkhoz "Novinki", located in the Postavy district of the Vitebsk region, a pleasant aroma of fresh fish hovers, as if you are holding freshly caught carp in your hands. And it's understandable – right before our eyes, a massive resettlement of underwater inhabitants to their winter quarters is taking place.
Staying for the Winter
In September-November, Rybkhoz "Novinki" transfers fish from rearing and feeding ponds to wintering ponds. If the former are one hundred to one hundred and fifty hectares in size, the latter are only about a hectare. From there, even if a half-meter ice forms, it is easy to catch the fish and send it for sale. It is simply impossible to sell all the live produce in the autumn – about 40-50 tons of carp, silver carp, and grass carp are caught from the pond per day.
– We start catching fish from rearing and feeding ponds at the end of August, – says Dmitry Spalvis, Deputy Director for Commercial Affairs. – The main thing is that there is no heat – at high temperatures, fish tolerate catching poorly, they can die. We traditionally finish catching by the Day of Agricultural Workers. We drain the water from the ponds into the river. They will be empty until the end of January to freeze the pond beds. Subsequently, we will begin to fill the feeding ponds for growing a new crop of fish.
From the Bathtub to the Pond
The life of carp, catfish, pike, and tench at the farm begins in the incubation workshop, where sensors maintain a constant water temperature. Large tanks are installed here for spawning. The miracle of creation begins when 2-3 pairs of adult fish are released into two-cubic-meter containers, ten of which are in the workshop. Millions of eggs are obtained at the output. Their exact number no one can name, but it is said that after spawning, all artificial plants (rushes) located along the walls of the mini-basins are covered with roe. Optimal conditions, such as temperature and water flow, are maintained until the fry hatch.
When the offspring grow, they are either released into their own ponds or sold to other organizations for stocking reservoirs. The production cycle is three years. In the first year, one-year-old fish are raised, up to 35-40 grams. During this period, they gain weight the fastest, increasing in size by 40-45 times. In the second year, they gain a mass of 250-300 grams, and by the end of the third year, they grow into commercial fish weighing 1.5-2.5 kg. These are then placed in wintering ponds to be sold from autumn to spring. Of course, a carp can grow up to a meter in size, but it will eat so much in that time that it will literally become golden.
Carp, although they look large, literally fast for most of the year. They actively feed from May to mid-August. The rest of the time they stand in the water and hardly move, losing weight. However, during the summer season, the farm's fish population can consume about 60 tons of compound feed per day.
Full Net
Before being caught from the fattening ponds, the fish are "whistled" – fresh water is supplied, and the inhabitants of the depths, sensing its inflow, line up along the banks. Then the fishermen walk along the edge, stomping their feet and slapping the surface with rods, driving their charges towards a fifty-meter net. With its help, the carp are pulled into a fish collector, from which they are transferred to fish trucks. The catch at a time is over ten tons. But it takes a week and a half to pull all the fish out of a hundred-hectare pond.
– The weather is good for the fish now, they tolerate transportation easily, – says Yevgeny Kiselev, head of the fattening system section. – Fish are afraid not of the cold, but of the heat. I am responsible for seven large ponds, from 88 to 155 hectares. On average, we get 200 tons of fish from 100 hectares. Mostly I have carp, silver carp, grass carp, and pike.
The live fish caught are brought to the sorting workshop, where they are manually sorted by size and species before being sent to wintering ponds. Each pond houses a specific species: elite carp, silver carp, or grass carp.
– Sorting is a manual process; it cannot be automated. Humans work many times faster than robots, – explains Dmitry Spalvis. – Yesterday, we sorted 46 tons in a day. Everything needs to be done quickly – the caught fish won't wait. We immediately load them into fish carriers and send them to wintering ponds or for sale.
The interviewee states that it sometimes takes a week to sell a cistern of fish (2-3 tons) at retail. And we are heading to the nearest wintering pond. An aerator, vaguely resembling a catamaran, spins its blades on the surface. About a dozen seagulls circle above the water, but the carps are "not to their taste." The birds look for crucian carps, inadvertently helping the fish farmers.
Winged Pests
The farm has many enemies: beavers building dams, gray herons strolling along the ponds. But the main one is the cormorant, a large predatory bird with a hooked beak.
– A cormorant needs a kilogram of fish per day, – says Dmitry Spalvis. – But it's one thing when it eats an adult fish, and quite another when a flock of cormorants attacks fry weighing 30-40 grams. To get full, one cormorant needs about 20 of them. Therefore, our main task is to withstand their pressure in the spring.
The farm has a permit to shoot almost one and a half thousand feathered "poachers" per year, but this does not solve the problem. Gas cannons are also used for scaring them away; they are placed on dams and on rubber boats moored in the middle of the pond. The problem is that cormorants get used to repetitive sounds.
Another fish lover is the white-tailed eagle. Its wingspan is up to 2.5 meters. When this bird flies over the road, it occupies its entire width. But the farm tolerates the eagles – there are not many of them, and they are listed in the Red Book.
Tasty Assortment
– We are mainly involved with carp species, – says Dmitry Spalvis. – Carp, silver carp, grass carp. We incubate pike, and are trying to breed catfish and tench. According to the plan, by 2025, we are to produce 1050 tons of products, including over 700 tons of marketable fish. By the tenth of November, we
According to the investment program for 2026-2027, the construction of a processing plant for freezing, salting, and smoking fish is planned on the farm's territory.
A pleasant bonus for anglers is also offered here. From May 1 to September 30, anyone can visit the "Novinki" Fish Farm and, by purchasing a ticket for 30 rubles, try their luck at fishing with a rod. One ticket allows for catching up to 4 kilograms; exceeding this limit will incur an additional charge. Anglers from all over Belarus come here for the fishing adrenaline. This year, over 6,000 tickets were purchased.
1. The total area of the pond fund in the farm is about a thousand hectares. Water is supplied to the reservoirs from the Lasitsa and Golbeitsa rivers. 60 people work at the "Novinki" Fish Farm.
2. The "Novinki" Fish Farm was established immediately after the reunification of the Western and Eastern parts of Belarus in 1939. The enterprise was created on the site of a former noble fish farm. After the war, the area of the fish farm was increased almost tenfold.