"Commercial?"
"Possibly. I need to confirm."
"How valuable?"
"I do not know yet."
"Daniel."
"I genuinely do not know. But these are not ordinary neighborhood stocking fish."
I looked toward the access road Karen had driven down earlier.
For the first time, the $4,800 bill seemed almost irrelevant.
Daniel came to the ranch the following morning.
He carried two file boxes, a laptop, rolled maps, and enough coffee for both of us. We spread everything across my kitchen table while the sun came through the windows over the sink.
"I started with the tag numbers," he said.
He opened a state fisheries record.
The tags belonged to a selective breeding registry once operated by a private aquaculture company called Riverstone Fisheries.
I recognized the name vaguely.
"There used to be something called Riverstone east of here."
"Exactly."
Daniel unrolled a county map.
Silver Ridge occupied most of the center.
My ranch lay west and slightly south.
A long parcel east of the development carried the old Riverstone name.
Through all three properties ran a blue line.
A drainage corridor.
"This begins above the old Riverstone facility," Daniel said, tracing it with one finger. "It passes through what are now Silver Ridge retention structures and eventually connects into the natural channel feeding your pond."
"So fish could move through it?"
"Some could. Not thousands of large tagged broodfish. Those were trucked. But historically, yes, the waters were connected."
He handed me another record.
A fisheries registration several years old listed Ridgewater Fisheries LLC as a management operator associated with the remaining breeding stock.
"Who are they?"
"That is one of the things I am trying to determine."
"Are they active?"
"Barely. Their registration history is complicated."
Daniel pulled out an older map.
1978.
The paper was yellow at the folds.
My pond appeared as a blue oval near the western property line.
Beside it sat a small printed designation.
FISHERIES DEMONSTRATION SITE.
I looked at him.
"My pond?"
"Apparently."
"Nobody told me that when I bought this land."
"It may not have been an encumbrance. It looks more like a historical agricultural designation."
"What does that mean?"
"That the water may have been used as part of a county-supported fisheries demonstration or reserve program before your ownership. We need the underlying records."
I leaned back.
"And you think Karen knew?"
"I think somebody knew this pond could receive fish without killing them."
That was not the same answer.
It was worse.
Later that afternoon, I walked the entire shoreline.
I had done that hundreds of times, but now I looked at everything differently.
Near the eastern bank, under a tangle of winter grass, I saw a piece of blue-gray plastic protruding from the mud.
I almost pulled it free.
Then I remembered Daniel.
Instead, I brushed enough dirt away to read it.
An old county seal.
Below it, faded letters.
RIVERSTONE AQUATIC RESERVE.
I photographed it.