Trout Monger Mayor
Due north on I-35 from Lino Lakes lives a man and his solar-powered trout farm. Regulars at the Minneapolis Farmers Market know him as the Trout Monger. To the residents of Columbus, Minnesota, he’s the mayor. To everyone, he’s Jesse Preiner.
Preiner, a tall, flannel-and-blue-jean-wearing guy, has lived in Columbus all his 64 years of life. The stoic mayor and fish farmer has seen the country roads turn into county highways. He’s seen family businesses emerge and recede as inevitably as the waves on the North Shore. His own family business, the one that brings trout lovers from all corners of the state to stall #404 at the Minneapolis Farmers Market, will shortly follow suit.
For over 20 years, Preiner has been raising, catching, and smoking rainbow trout at his sixty-acre farm just north of the Twin Cities, but the family business, which he took over—although Preiner humbly prefers to say he grew into the business—at the ripe age of twenty, has been in existence since the 60s.
It all began when Leona and Bernard Preiner set up shop in 1968 a few miles away from where the Trout Monger’s farm is today. “I'm only two miles from where I was born. My parents were each a mile from where they were born,” Preiner says. “So we never got very far.” Trout-Air in Columbus was originally a place for fish lovers to catch and eat trout in over 20 different man-made ponds on the property.
Not just a local spot for anglers to spend a lazy summer Sunday, Trout-Air was ahead of its time. Before “farm-to-table” became the buzzword of the culinary landscape, Trout-Air was all living it. Patrons could make their way north on I-35 and rest for a spell along the ponds dug out by Bernard himself. The fish they caught would be put on ice to take home, or customers would clean and grill them at the picnic area. In the 70s, a restaurant was added to the establishment, in the 80s a concert venue that hosted acts like Megadeth and Charlie Daniels. And in the late 90s it was sold.
The Preiners sold the Trout-Air property, where a retirement community, Preiner’s Preserve, now lives, and the family handed off the business to Jesse and his sisters, who had been helping their parents with the farm since they were in high school. Preiner moved the family trout business a few miles northwest of the original property, and put a solar-powered spin on it. Three rows of solar panels keep the wells running, aerate the tanks and ponds, and put supplemental oxygen into the water.
Preiner and his team have been at the Minneapolis Farmers Market for 35 years selling their products, which include smoked trout of all sizes, fresh rainbow trout, trout roe, seasonal ingredients like mushrooms, and, new this year, a smoked trout spread.
Throughout those 35 years of his business, local aquaculturists have stepped onto the scene. In 2017, Happy Fish Aquaponics, dove into the Minnesota fish farming scene. Combining the practices of hydroponics with aquaculture, the business farms tilapia and greens utilizing a modern and sustainable growing method. Blue Water Farms, a Minnesota-based startup, has plans to become the first commercial indoor walleye farm. The farm would operate using recirculating aquaculture systems technology, and founder and CEO Clarence Bischoff has said that the indoor farm is backed by a swath of scientists and engineers.
The new days of aquaculture rely less on the natural elements and more on advanced technology to keep the fish fresh and floundering. But Preiner is more of a traditionalist than a chaser of the newest aqua-tech. “If you're smart enough to figure it all out and do it, you probably can do another job that would be much easier and pay much better,” he says.
As the son of one of the first pioneers of aquaculture in Minnesota, fish farming has always been a part of Preiner’s life. I asked him why he’s continued the business for so long—was it to keep the family tradition alive? Or to make his own name in the aquaculture scene? His response: “A little bit of neither.”
“I wasn’t trying to make a name for myself; it’s just an enjoyable thing to do for two days a week,” Preiner says. He’s got a great customer base, he’s been in the business long enough for his customers and the grandchildren of those customers to stick around.
“It's not like going to work. Yes, it's hard work, it's your business,” Preiner says. “But it's also seeing friends, seeing customers, you know, becoming a little part of their life.” After 35 years of witnessing the cyclical nature of the local market and its customers, Preiner says “you really get a feeling of life.”
“The old people come and go — they just do. Pretty soon they got a walker, pretty soon they got a wheelchair, pretty soon they don’t come. But young people are coming; they’re just replacing the old people.”
Believe it or not, trout mongering isn’t too different from being the mayor, Preiner says. Both jobs require you to be on your toes, to always be forward-thinking, and both jobs require Preiner to always keep his work on the top of his mind. “They’re both babysitting jobs,” he jokes. Every morning he wakes up at 5:30 to check up on the fish, and when he’s not taking care of the fish, he’s taking care of Columbus. Community and civic engagement is just as much a part of who he is as mayor in 2021 as it was when he was another helper at Trout-Air in the 60s and 70s, interacting with hundreds and thousands of trout fishers and concertgoers.
As a life-long resident of Columbus, Preiner has been involved in city and county politics for the past 30 years, attending planning commission and council meetings, and being a part of the planning project for the I-35 bridge project. His family history in the city runs deep: since the late 1800s, his family has lived in the city as farmers and business people.
Preiner began his second term as mayor of Columbus in 2018, and will run for re-election next November. He’d like to serve two more terms and “make progress for Columbus'' by bringing in businesses that pay decent property taxes, relieving the tax burden on regular homeowners, and continuing to develop Columbus’s economy. Once he’s finished being the mayor, there’s a good chance he’ll finish his Trout Monger title, as well. There’s currently no heir to the Trout Monger throne, and in a few years the business will retreat, concluding half a century of raising and selling smoked fish. “If this writing career doesn’t work out, come see me,” Preiner told me while resting on the back of his Trout Monger truck, the same truck he’s been taking to the market every Saturday and Sunday from April to November since he was 20 years old.
Preiner doesn’t remember the last time he went on vacation or took a break from his work of taking care of the fish. Once he retires, he has a few ideas of how he’ll occupy his time in mind. He’ll continue reading history, which he enjoys in his freetime. He’ll sell his fish farm. He might even travel the world and visit all the friends he’s met at the farmers market in their respective countries. After all of the years of people leaving their homes to visit Jesse at the market, once Trout Monger ends its run, Jesse can finally leave the market to visit them at their homes.
