This is a great story from the LA Times about an entrepreneur who, somewhat reluctantly, has stumbled upon a bonanza selling live fish — almost exclusively to Asian markets and restaurants.

Most of the action here takes place in the China/Asia town in downtown Oakland, just a few blocks from where I lived for several years.

Ken Beer wanted to study bighorn sheep.

The year was 1975 and Beer had a summer to kill at home in California before starting graduate school. That’s when three Arkansas entrepreneurs approached him with a harebrained scheme.

Soon Beer was hooked. He skipped graduate school and started raising fish. Mistakes were made. One customer wanted 100,000 finger-length catfish, half his year’s earnings.    

Prior to moving to Korea the idea of going to a restaurant plucking live fish from a tank just before cooking it might have made me a little sick. But I know better now. If you’re eating fish at a restaurant or from a store that doesn’t buy live fish (or at least get it delivered every day) you may as well suck on a piece of rubber. Or at least hope its fried to the point of where it doesn’t matter if it’s fish or rubber.

By 1982, Beer was selling live catfish one or two at a time right from the farm in Galt, just outside Sacramento. He noticed that Chinese and Vietnamese from the Bay Area would snap up a hundred fish at a time to sell in their city markets.

That’s when he thought: Why not deliver wholesale?

Beer now serves more than 50 markets in the Bay Area    

And don’t miss the small photo essay that comes with the story.