Farming fish in the U.S. is not exactly a slam dunk business. Production of catfish, the most widely farmed species, has declined by almost a third since 2003 due largely to a surge in low-priced catfish from Vietnam and China. Some people had high hopes for shrimp farming in places like Texas, where coastal land is relatively cheap and plentiful, and the summers are long and hot. But after a series of disease outbreaks and a flood of cheap farm-raised imports, most shrimp farmers in the Lone Star state have called it quits. As a result, the state's shrimp harvests have plunged to just 3 million pounds, a third of what they were seven years ago.

Still, some people have figured out how to make money farming and selling seafood. Just ask the Bowers family. Harold Bowers has been farming fish for some 20 years and he's hit some bumps along the way. In 1989, his redfish crop was wiped out when a cold snap killed them. Then, in 1994, he lost 90 percent of his shrimp crop to disease. So why has he managed to stay in business when so many others have thrown in the towel? "It's because I've been a farmer for 30 years. Before I farmed fish and shrimp, I grew rice, so I'm a hands-on farmer," he says. "A lot of people who got into aquaculture came from 9 to 5 jobs. It's not that kind of a job."

Today Harold and his family, including his wife, daughter Paula and son Reed, produce well over half of Texas' farmed shrimp production from their ponds on the shores of Matagorda Bay, equidistant between Corpus Christi and Galveston. This year, Bowers Shrimp and Fish expects to harvest almost 2 million pounds of Pacific white shrimp, easily making the company the largest farmed shrimp producer in the U.S. The shrimp are harvested in September and October and most are frozen whole in the company's processing plant and sold in the winter and spring, primarily to markets in Louisiana.

In 2009, the Bowers' decided to give fish another try and they currently farm channel catfish and hybrid striped bass on some 650 acres of ponds. Their annual catfish production is up to about 6.5 million pounds, or about a third of the state's total. Striped bass harvests, meanwhile, are just starting to kick in. "It helps to have more items on our truck," Harold says. Most of the catfish and striped bass, he says, are sold fresh.

Click here to find Bower Shrimp and Fish's products and remember to tell them you found them on FishChoice when you contact them.