At home that night, she searched for aquaculture advice and found more reasons to be frightened than encouraged. Water quality, stocking densities, feed conversion, permits, disease, oxygen, grading, transport; each subject opened into ten others that seemed to require money, experience, and equipment. She filled three pages with questions and circled the only address nearby that offered answers without trying to sell her something. The fisheries extension office was forty minutes away, and on Monday morning she called to make an appointment.
Roy Tanner's office smelled of damp paper, old coffee, and the rubber boots lined up beside a filing cabinet. Maps of river systems covered one wall, while photographs of healthy ponds and failed operations shared space on another. Roy was in his early sixties, with hands roughened by fieldwork and the patient expression of a man who had been asked to approve impossible plans for thirty years. He offered Delaney a chair, looked at her photographs, and did not try to make her feel better about what he saw.
"Those banks need attention before anyone puts fish in them," he said, placing the third photograph beside the first. "You've got runoff coming across the north side, a tired outlet on pond two, and something unpleasant happening with the water chemistry. I can't tell you how unpleasant from a picture, and anybody who says they can is selling you something." Delaney opened her notebook and asked him to tell her what could be tested rather than guessed.
He studied her more closely then. Most people came to him asking how much money they could make or whether he knew a lender willing to fund a grand idea. Delaney asked what had killed the fish that used to live there, how to tell whether the ponds could recover, and what would happen if the answer was no. Roy explained that disease, oxygen trouble, poor water quality, and mismanagement could look similar after a loss; surviving ponds required monitoring, not optimism.
He visited the property with her that Friday, carrying test supplies and a clipboard scarred by years of use. They walked slowly, stopping at the inlet, the eroded banks, and the places where runoff could carry sediment or chemicals into the ponds. The tests did not show anything that made rehabilitation impossible, but they revealed enough trouble to justify a long list of repairs and a cautious schedule. Roy wrote down what needed professional attention and what a careful owner could learn to maintain herself.
At the dry fourth pond, he pushed a spade into the soil and lifted a compact block of pale clay. He rubbed the earth between his fingers, then walked another few yards and repeated the motion. "This one's got a better bottom than you might think," he said, looking across the weeds. "But bringing it back isn't the first problem you should solve, and if I were you, I wouldn't even put it on this year's budget."