Matt Schroeder

AGFC Regional Fisheries Biologist

MAYFLOWER — The Arkansas Game and Fish Commission’s Habitat for the Holidays Program supplies anglers throughout the state with used and leftover Christmas trees to sweeten up their own fishing locations, but anglers at Lake Conway’s Lawrence Landing saw a bonus batch of trees thanks to Lowe’s home improvement store in Conway.

This year Lowes in Conway had a surplus of unsold trees they needed to dispose of. AGFC fisheries biologists were happy to tell them to drop the Christmas trees off at Lawrence Landing, the established site for the annual habitat program.  Lowes dropped off more than 100 Christmas trees the second week of January. By the first week of February, anglers had whittled this pile down to just 40 trees. Biologists used the remaining trees to create seven new locations at Lawrence Landing for bank and boat anglers to enjoy. The tops of most of the trees currently are visible at the water’s surface to make locating them easier for bank anglers without GPS/Sonar units.  

Five MossBack brand artificial structures also were added to the lake by the AGFC, this time along the bank fishing area at Adams Lake Access. These structures have been used on other lakes in the state and provide anglers with fish-holding habitat close to the bank and last for years. 

All fish attractor locations will be added to the AGFC’s interactive map and the Lake Conway brush pile sonar files, available at www.agfc.com/en/fishing/where-fish/fish-attractors. 

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Jim Harris

Managing Editor Arkansas Wildlife Magazine

LITTLE ROCK – Arkansas will receive a share of $25 million being distributed in 2020 by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to states in the Mississippi River Basin and the Great Lakes region to better manage and study Asian carp.

The Arkansas Game and Fish Commission has been working for the past several months to receive some of the grant money, according to Bill Posey, Fisheries Division assistant chief over Aquatic Wildlife Diversity Programs, and USFWS is passing along $863,177 to the agency on Oct. 1, with about $635,000 available this fiscal year. At the September AGFC commission meeting last week, Commissioner Joe Morgan announced that his budget committee had approved a minute order moving $635,759 to the Fisheries Division for Asian carp research and management, with the USFWS’s grant reimbursing the entire amount.

“This is a new pot of money put into the U.S. Fish and Wildlife budget by Congress in the past year specifically for managing Asian carp,” Ben Batten, AGFC Fisheries chief, said. “There are 28 states that make up the Mississippi River Basin, and almost all of them are affected in some way. We have been researching and monitoring Asian carp, but these additional funds will greatly enhance our ability to progress in our knowledge and management capabilities.” 

Total amount of money allocated to the sub-basins that include Arkansas was $2.3 million. The entire congressional appropriation to the USFWS was $25 million, with $13.92 million going to areas outside the Great Lakes region.
Posey said the AGFC receives an annual appropriation of $46,000 a year from USFWS to implement its Aquatic Nuisance Species plan, which was approved in 2013. Asian carp are only a part of that plan, with such invasive species as the northern snakehead plus several aquatic nuisance plants also getting the agency’s attention.

There are four known species of Asian carp in Arkansas: silver, bighead, grass and black carp. The AGFC’s plans will be geared mostly toward managing silver and bighead carp, Posey said, but all four species of nonnative, nuisance carp will receive attention.

Arkansas received enough money from the USFWS funding to help with management projects in two Mississippi River sub-basins, Posey said. Arkansas will share efforts with Louisiana, Mississippi, Tennessee, Kentucky and Missouri in the lower Mississippi River sub-basin on one project, and will also manage Asian carp in the Arkansas, White and Red rivers sub-basin that extends into northwest Louisiana, Texas, Oklahoma, Missouri, Kansas, New Mexico and Colorado.

Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY.), the Senate majority leader, reportedly led the funding efforts in Congress late last year for the USFWS appropriation. Kentucky Lake, a navigation reservoir on the Tennessee River that reaches into the senator’s home state, has seen a serious invasion of silver carp in recent years.

Asian carp are viewed as a food source in China, from where they came to the U.S. in the last century. They were imported to the U.S. to help manage aquatic vegetation in aquaculture ponds and sewage lagoons or, in the case of black carp, to control the snails in aquaculture ponds. Black carp threaten native mussel, snail and crayfish populations, the most endangered groups of animals in the world. The introduction of grass carp for aquatic vegetation management in lakes didn’t appear problematic since they were not known to reproduce in the environment. However, fertile grass carp were recently found in the Sandusky River in Ohio and are believed to have been born and bred there. The Sandusky River flows into Lake Erie, one of the Great Lakes. 

Silver and bighead carp can reproduce in large numbers in rivers, and Posey says he’s seen silver carp that were 15-20 pounds. The carp can dominate the fish community in backwaters and make life difficult for sport fish, hurting angling and tourism in the process.

Silver carp and bighead carp feed on plankton, Posey said. “All species of fish rely on plankton at some point in their life,” he said. “When you start having a large amount of consumers of plankton, like silver carp or bighead carp, they are going to affect other species.

“Currently, the best method to manage Asian carp is removal”, Posey added. That is where some of this funding will go. “We hope to contract fishermen to harvest them and get them out of the water,” he said.

Along with contracted fishing for carp, the money to Arkansas will allow biologists to research Asian carp populations and movement, he said. Right now, Posey says, it’s just a guess how many are in the state’s waterways. Some $200,000 in the first year is budgeted for contract fishing, split between the two sub-basins in Arkansas, while nearly $400,000 is split in the budget for studying movement, distribution and population demographics of Asian carp in both the Lower Red basin and the Lower Mississippi basin along with the Arkansas and White rivers. These projects will help inform future management decisions such as where migration barriers should be placed, spawning locations, the population size for these species, among other things, Posey said.

Before this latest money from USFWS, most big grants to manage Asian carp were going to prevent their migration into the Great Lakes from the Mississippi River via the Chicago River and through the Chicago shipping canal. This grant will continue to send about $11 million that direction.

Silver carp are encountered more in the backwaters, such as an oxbow or something along those lines, rather than the main river itself, Posey said, Carp have provided a business opportunity for some people; Posey noted a company in Kentucky that buys Asian carp from commercial fishermen and processes the meat into multiple products for shipping back to Asia. “It’s a light meat, kind of sweet, with a firm texture,” he said.

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Randy Zellers

Assistant Chief of Communications

MAGNOLIA – The sun may have cooked away any rainbows over Lake Columbia on Saturday, July 27, but local angler David Allen Sisson certainly found the proverbial pot of gold when he netted a fish few in the fishing world have ever heard of. A golden crappie surfaced at the end of his line during one of his frequent trips to the 3,000-acre fishing destination in Columbia County. 

Sisson was vertically jigging a sweat tea and lemon-colored Bobby Garland jig on a chartreuse jighead when the fish took the bait.

“The jig is the same color as a little bluegill, and that’s what those fish are after down there this time of year,” Sisson said. “I’d caught about three crappie off the pile before that one hit. It hit just like a crappie and pulled just like a crappie, but when it got to the surface, I couldn’t believe my eyes. It was a beautiful fish like nothing I’d seen before.”

Sisson’s luck continued. As he looked around after the catch, another angler was nearby, so he drove over to him to get a photo while the fish was fresh out of the water.

“The pictures still don’t do it justice,” Sisson said. “It was amazing, and I just feel blessed to have caught it.”

Arkansas Game and Fish Commission District Fisheries Supervisor and avid crappie angler Andy Yung also was excited to hear about the catch. 

“I had never seen a golden crappie in my life,” Yung said. “I’ve read about them, but it’s something you just never see in the wild.”

Yung explains the gold coloration is caused by a genetic mutation called Xanthism, similar to what causes a rare animal to be an albino or the black pigmentation in some extremely rare cases of deer and other animals. Xanthic crappie not only are lottery-drawing rare, but their coloring can hinder their ability to survive. These sorts of animals usually stand out from the others and are typically eaten by predators long before they reach maturity. 

The fish was caught on one of many artificial brush piles sunk by the AGFC in the last few years. 

“Columbia is a water supply reservoir, so we have to be creative when adding fish attractors,” Yung said. “The lower end of the lake really lacks deep cover in the open water, and adding fish attractors in that part of the lake was a major improvement anglers asked for in public meetings when we wrote the fishery management plan. Since that time we have added more than 500 such structures to the lake, and we plan to keep it up.”

Sisson says he fishes the attractors often and really appreciates the efforts of the AGFC to place them in the lake for crappie anglers.

“They’re marked with GPS coordinates on the AGFC website, so you just have to plug them into your GPS unit and go right to them,” Sisson said. 

Columbia recently was featured for its bass angling in Bassmaster Magazine, ranking in the top 100 bass lakes in the country. Yung and Sisson hope the news of the rare crappie catch also shines a light on the fantastic crappie fishing to be had at the lake.

“I’ve lived in Magnolia since 1985, and have fished the lake since it was first impounded,” Sisson said. “I fish there all the time, and bring my 4-year-old grandson with me when I can. We catch so many fish that I only keep a few each trip and still manage to share crappie with my neighbors and friends.”  

Sisson says his golden catch didn’t end up in a frying pan, but has been taken to a taxidermist in Magnolia to mount.

“I just hope they can duplicate it,” Sisson said. “They had never seen one in person, so it’s new territory for them. I brought them the pictures of when it was caught, so they could get the colors as accurate as possible.” 

The post Lake Columbia crappie angler strikes gold appeared first on Arkansas Game & Fish Commission.

Jim Harris

Managing Editor Arkansas Wildlife Magazine

LITTLE ROCK – The president of the American Fisheries Society’s Fisheries Administration Section personally delivered a prestigious award to the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission’s Family and Community Fishing Program earlier this summer.

The program’s Family Fun Day events, which were started last year, garnered the 2018 Sport Fish Restoration Outstanding Project in Aquatic Education. The award, according to AFS Fisheries Administration Section president Joe Larscheidwhen he addressed the AGFC at its late June monthly meeting, is intended to both highlight the importance and effectiveness of the Sport Fish Restoration program and recognize excellence in fisheries management, research and education.

“Was I surprised at us winning the award? Definitely. I wasn’t expecting that,” Maurice Jackson, coordinator of the AGFC’s Family and Community Fishing Program, said. “They only give out one of those awards nationally each year. Mr. Larscheid, when he spoke to the Commission, said that from the way the events were organized and implemented, it was one of the best examples of R3 he’d ever seen.”

“R3” is a national initiative among outdoors agencies referring to a focus to “recruit, retain and reactivate.” In local parlance and with respect to the Family and Community Fishing Program, Jackson said, that would mean: getting more people of all ages to Arkansas’s lakes and streams to fish, having them return again, and attracting others who used to fish to participate again. Jackson said he and Clint Coleman, the FCFP’s assistant coordinator, began planning the first Family Fun Days in 2017. They put them into operation last year at four larger Arkansas cities, each in a different quadrant of the state, while using paid social media advertising and bringing Jessica Feltz, the AGFC’s human dimensions specialist in the Fisheries Division, on board to survey families about their experience. The adult heads of families who participated in the in-depth surveys became eligible to win outdoors-oriented excursions provided by the AGFC.

“We just did what we thought was right for the people,” Jackson said. “We researched different ways to outreach. And the surveys that Jessica did, having someone who can do a survey, seeing whether or not it worked, helped tremendously from the human dimensions side of it. R3 is what we designed the program under, those categories of recruiting, retaining and reactivating.”

The Family Fun Days, Jackson stressed, were not only about fishing. He added the hunting component of archery and BB gun shooting, as well as just being on the water through paddling. The Family and Community Fishing program involved many aspects of the AGFC in its efforts, not just fIsheries and the stocking of ponds with catfish, but the communications and enforcement divisions, along with the Arkansas Game and Fish Foundation. Also, Arkansas Hunters Feeding the Hungry prepared wild game for the attendees.

“It was a group effort, for helping with the program and for getting the word out on the program and making it a success,” he said. “And, we used both English and Spanish speaking media through our social media advertising to reach an age group that had never been reached before by the agency.”

The American Fisheries Society took notice. The AGFC’s director, Pat Fitts, and assistant director Chris Colclasure, along with now retired director Caroline Cone, nominated the program’s Family Fun Day events for the national award.

Family Fun Days were held with large turnouts at local ponds in Texarkana, Pine Bluff, Springdale and West Memphis. “Now, when we work with the cities and organizations, we’re noticing they are already beginning to schedule new, related events on their own,” Jackson said. “Pine Bluff now wants to bring on water activities. West Memphis is doing the same thing, implementing some water activity simply because we introduced them to it.

“The end result of us doing those Family Fun Days for the communities is them taking it on for themselves, saying, ‘Yes, this is something we ought to be doing for our community.’”

Jackson specifically noted an instance in West Memphis’s TIlden Park where a preschooler was begging his mother, Gwendolyn Jones, to be allowed to paddle a canoe with an AGFC wildlife officer, Lt. Rodney Myers, at the fun day. Though at first reluctant and concerned about safety, the woman relented and both mom and son went canoeing with the officer. “She was mesmerized,” Jackson said.

“They had never done that before. Afterward, she was saying they were going to do this more often.”
Jones later shared on Facebook: “Being his mom means facing my own personal fears. He was ready! Thank you, Rodney, for the encouragement. This was so much fun.”

Family Fun Days picked up again this year, although Mother Nature intervened twice, with bad weather forcing cancellation of two of the four events. They could not be rescheduled because of the full array of other events the FCFP handles during the year, Jackson said, but they’ll try again next year. “We’ll probably start planning for 2020 in August,” he said.

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Randy Zellers

Assistant Chief of Communications

LITTLE ROCK — Biologists with the Andrew Hulsey State Fish Hatchery delivered the last batch of Florida largemouth bass fingerlings to Millwood Lake and White Oak Lake in early July, completing the second-highest annual stocking of these fish in Arkansas.

All said and done, the AGFC hatchery system delivered more than 1.3 million Florida bass to select lakes throughout south and central Arkansas this spring. The weather conditions posed a challenge to biologists. Tommy Laird, assistant chief of fisheries over the AGFC’s hatchery system says the wet, cool spring had a serious impact on spawning in hatchery ponds this year. 

“The first week or so, everything was going great, and then for about a week period after one of these showers, the males just stopped fertilizing eggs,” Laird said. “We started losing whole nests to this lack of fertilization.”

The Florida bass spawning project, which has been a strong annual component of the Hulsey hatchery since the early 1990s quickly fell behind schedule. Hatchery staff lept into action to salvage the season and keep up with demand.

“We were about halfway to where we should have been by the time we’re normally wrapped up,” Laird said. “We had to start spawning some younger-than-normal broodstock to get more spawning time, and we had to cut back on some stocking densities in the ponds to increase survival.”

According to Laird, even in the best conditions, only a fraction of the fry stocked in the ponds survive to fingerling size. Large amounts of fry must be stocked to compensate for this loss. But this year, managers reduced the amount of fish per pond to increase the overall health of the fingerlings and saw a better return.

“There’s only so much food and space available to grow fish in the pond, so by reducing your stocking rate, you’re hoping to see better growth and survival of those fish present,” Laird said. “This year we saw that scenario play out. Instead of being a half-million fingerlings short, the increased survival rates enabled us to get very close to our target production.”

Florida largemouth bass are a prize for many anglers in The Natural State because of their potential to grow into trophy proportions, but the AGFC hatchery system can only produce so many fish, and the use of Florida largemouth bass must be reserved for areas where biologists think they will make the most impact. This year’s stockings were concentrated on 16 bodies of water, including large lakes like Millwood Reservoir in Southwest Arkansas, medium-size reservoirs like Upper and Lower White Oak Lakes in Nevada and Ouachita Counties and river systems possessing abundant backwaters filled with aquatic vegetation. 

“Florida largemouth bass thrive in shallow reservoirs with high-fertility and long growing seasons,” said Jason Olive, assistant chief of fisheries management. “Many anglers ask us to stock them all over the state, but we have to reserve the limited supply we can produce to those areas where we believe they will make the most impact. All of the Florida largemouth bass stocked this year were placed in bodies of water south of I-40, and nearly all were in lakes with an abundant amount of shallow flats where they do well.”

One deviation from the shallow-water recipe this year was the resumption of stocking Florida largemouth bass into Lake Ouachita.   

Biologists teamed up with members of the Arkansas Black Bass Coalition and other anglers to boat stock 100,000 fingerling Florida largemouth bass in the Rabbittail area of the lake. Additionally, the Lake Ouachita Nursery Pond was filled with Florida largemouth bass fry to be released once they reach fingerling size. 

“Submerged vegetation in the Rabbittail area is a game changer for Ouachita,” said Olive.  “Without that excellent habitat, successful stocking of Florida largemouth bass would be highly unlikely in a deep, clear, highland reservoir like Ouachita.
“100,000 fingerlings in Rabbittail and another shot of fingerlings from the nursery pond isn’t going to make any impact in the overall population size of a 40,000-acre lake like Ouachita, but they may produce some trophy-quality fish that will continue to pass on some of their genetics,” Olive said. “Genetic testing from fin clips taken during the last few years indicate the majority of bass larger than 8 pounds caught in Lake Ouachita have some Florida largemouth bass genetics in them from a previous stocking effort in 2007-2014.”

Lakes stocked with Florida largemouth bass fingerlings in 2019 include:

• Bear Creek Lake, Lee County
• Bois d’Arc Lake, Hempstead County
• Bragg Lake, Ouachita County
• Cane Creek Lake, Lincoln County
• Chicot Lake, Chicot County
• Columbia Lake, Columbia County
• Felsenthal Reservoir, Union County
• Horseshoe Lake, Crittenden County
• Lake Erling, Lafayette County
• Lake June, Lafayette County
• Lake Norrell, Saline County
• Millwood Lake, Howard County
• Lake Ouachita, Montgomery County
• South Fork Lake, Hempstead County
• Lower White Oak Lake, Ouachita County
• Upper White Oak Lake, Ouachita County

Learn a little more about Arkansas’s Florida Largemouth Bass Project on Arkansas Wildlife Television

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Randy Zellers

Assistant Chief of Communications

LITTLE ROCK – The Arkansas Game and Fish Commission unanimously authorized $538,900 from the state’s Marine Fuel Tax program to be used in Fiscal Year 2020 for repairs and upgrades to boat ramps and access points throughout Arkansas at its meeting today.

The money will fund 15 improvements in the next year ranging from road repairs and parking lots to courtesy docks and riprap reinforcements to prevent erosion. Estimated costs for individual projects range from $10,000 for a courtesy dock at Brewer Lake to $60,000 to completely renovate the Perryville Access on the Fourche River.

During Wednesday’s briefing Commission Chairman Ken Reeves of Harrison asked about the various prices of projects planned that appeared similar on paper. Kevin Mullen, chief of the AGFC’s operations division, explained that various factors like site conditions, water level changes and engineering can cause a project’s cost and construction time to fluctuate widely.

“These are big improvements that our constituents have been waiting on,” said Commissioner Bobby Martin of Rogers.

Marine fuel taxes are collected on gasoline and diesel fuel used in boats throughout Arkansas. The money is held by the Arkansas State Department of Transportation and is distributed through a partnership between the AGFC and ADOT.

Ben Batten, AGFC chief of fisheries, said since its inception in 1969 Arkansas’s marine fuel tax has funded nearly $59 million in improvements to boating access in the state.

Projects funded for Fiscal Year 2020 with Marine Fuel Tax funds are:

• Repair of an asphalt road and riprap at Don Roufa Highway 412 Beaver Lake Access
• Repair of the parking area at Riverview School Access on the Strawberry River.
• Placement of rock to prevent erosion around the boat ramp at Romp Hole Access on the Kings River
• A courtesy dock on the Arkansas River at the Pendleton Access
• A courtesy dock on Brewer Lake
• Engineering for a boat ramp’s construction at the Greenville Bridge Access of the Mississippi River
• A new parking area and engineering for a new boat ramp at the Barfield Access of the Mississippi River
• Placement of riprap to repair an eroded hole in the parking lot of Highway 45 Access at Beaver Lake
• A courtesy dock at South Shore Landing on Lake Columbia
• Paving a parking lot at Big Clifty Park Access on Beaver Lake
• Boat access development at Highway 124 on Cadron Creek
• Renovation of the Perryville Access on the Fourche River
• Renovation and replacement of the ramp at Nimmo Access on the Little Red River
• A courtesy dock at Brady Point Access on Lake Ouachita
• A new parking lot and boat ramp at Interstate Park in Little Rock

In other business, the Commission:

• Authorized AGFC Director Pat Fitts to issue a permanent right-of-way easement for roughly 0.9 acres to Entergy Arkansas for placement of an overhead electric transmission line on Petit Jean River Wildlife Management Area.
• Awarded retiring AGFC Wildlife Officer Lt. Howard “Bubba” Norvell his service sidearm after 34 years of service.
• Awarded retiring AGFC Wildlife Officer Senior Cpl. Ross Spurlock his service sidearm after 30 years of service.
• Awarded retiring AGFC Wildlife Officer Senior Cpl. Robbie Stout his service sidearm after 24 years of service.
• Approved the removal of outdated and obsolete inventory with a total original cost of $90,909.85 and a present net book value of $8,128.60.

A video of the meeting is available at https://www.youtube.com/user/ArkansasGameandFish/videos.

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Randy Zellers

Assistant Chief of Communications

HEBER SPRINGS — The Arkansas Game and Fish Commission will hold a public meeting from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m., Thursday, February 28, at the Heber Springs Community Center to gather public input for the new Greers Ferry Lake Fisheries Management Plan.

Biologists will include presentations of recent research and fisheries-related management of the lake, including the current status of the fish population, results from the recent angler creel survey, habitat projects and threadfin shad stockings to boost the lake’s forage base. 

Attendees will then be able to participate in focus groups to help identify the things most important to them as the AGFC moves forward in developing the management plan.

Fisheries biologists will gather the results of all focus groups and build upon the plan with these findings. This will result in a draft of a new plan that will guide fisheries management activities on Greers Ferry for the next five years.

A second meeting will be held from 6-8 p.m. March 19, to review a draft of the plan with opportunity for additional input.

The Heber Springs Community Center is located at 201 Bobbie Jean Lane, Heber Springs, Arkansas.

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Randy Zellers

Assistant Chief of Communications

BRADLEY — Biologists with the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission have confirmed the presence of Giant Salvinia in a small portion of Lake Erling in Lafayette County. This is the second occurrence of the invasive plant in Arkansas, with the first being in Smith Park Lake in Miller County in 2017.

Giant Salvinia is a free-floating South American plant, similar in appearance to duckweed but much larger. It stays at the water’s surface and can rapidly cover a large area and choke out all life in the water beneath if left unchecked. According to Sea Grant Louisiana, under ideal conditions, a single plant of Giant Salvinia can multiply to cover 40 square miles of surface area in only three months.

The plant was identified just before Christmas by a local angler and reported to the AGRED Foundation, a non-profit organization and owner of the lake. They reported the find to The Arkansas Game and Fish Commission’s Camden Regional Office. Fisheries biologists then investigated the situation and confirmed the presence of the plant at the end of December.

“We do not own the lake, but have an agreement with AGRED to support them with technical assistance to the fishery,” said Andy Yung, AGFC district fisheries supervisor. “And with it being an invasive species like Giant Salvinia, we want to do whatever we can to prevent it from being established in Arkansas.”

Yung says Giant Salvinia has been an extremely difficult plant for lake managers in Louisiana and Texas to fight because of its extremely fast growth rate. The species can overtake an area, completely blocking light penetration and crowding out all other vegetation and even fish, essentially suffocating a fishery.

“With recent milder winters, we’ve seen some evidence of it creeping north and we’re doing whatever we can to keep it at bay,” Yung said.

Yung says it’s particularly troubling to see the plant in Erling, a popular fishing destination, where it has the potential to hitch a ride on anglers’ boats, trailers and equipment and be unknowingly transported to other nearby lakes.

“With Lake Columbia not too far away, we’re very concerned that it could end up there,” Yung said. “Columbia is a water-supply reservoir, so if it gets there, our ability to use any sorts of herbicides is eliminated and we’ll really be fighting a losing battle.”

Yung says the most likely source of the infestation was from an angler or hunter transporting the plant to the lake accidentally after boating in an area where the plant had already become established.

“We’ve been talking to our counterparts in Texas quite a bit about Giant Salvinia, and they believe it’s being spread just as much by waterfowl hunters as it is anglers,” Yung said. “Many of the places where it is popping up are much more popular as duck-hunting areas than they are fishing destinations.”

Eric Brinkman, AGFC district fisheries supervisor in the AGFC’s Hope Office, says this also was a likely scenario for the states’ first occurrence of the plant in 2017 in his district.

“We hunt and fish too, and it’s really easy to see how a small bit of the plant can get stuck on a boat trailer, in a prop or even hang on to decoys, decoy weights and other equipment duck hunters use,”

Brinkman said. “A lot of our hunters just aren’t aware of the issue, or they may think that because it’s winter that the plants are dead and won’t spread. Either way, we need all hunters and anglers to pay special attention to their equipment and remove all vegetation and mud from their gear before moving to a new location.”

Yung says plans are already in the works with AGRED to begin lowering Lake Erling enough to expose all known areas of Giant Salvinia to winter weather.

“We’ve helped them purchase the needed herbicides and surfactants to spray the infested areas,” Yung said. “Dropping the water level will make it much more effective and expose much more of the plants to the herbicide and any freezing weather we will have. Hopefully we can help them stop this infestation as soon as possible and prevent any further spread of the plant.”

Photo credit: Troy Evans, Great Smoky Mountains National Park, Bugwood.org

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Randy Zellers

Assistant Chief of Communications

HOT SPRINGS — The Arkansas Game and Fish Commission stocked 7,451,885 fish to supplement The Natural State’s waters and provide increased opportunity for anglers in 2018.

According to hatchery reports compiled by the AGFC Fisheries Division’s Aquatic Culture Section, 18 fish species were produced on AGFC hatcheries and nursery ponds. These fish weighed an approximate 690,171 pounds, which was spread out among dozens of fisheries in Arkansas. Three size ranges of fish were stocked throughout the year — fingerlings, which measure 1 to 3 inches, yearlings, which are larger than 3 inches, and adults, which are catchable-size and usually are retired brood stock that were used for hatchery and nursery pond production.

While the numbers are impressive, Tommy Laird, assistant chief of fisheries, says it’s important to look at the relative size of the fish stocked in addition to the total number.

“We stocked 515,036 striped bass last year, but all of them were fingerlings, which have a low survival rate,” Laird said. “Meanwhile, we stocked nearly 1.2 million Florida-strain largemouth bass, with 154,931 yearlings in the mix, which will have exponentially higher survival rates to adulthood. We also added 2,320 pure Florida-strain adults into lakes designated to receive them, which directly contribute as brood fish in those systems immediately.”

In addition to the sportfish stocked in Arkansas waters, hatcheries produced 2.1 million forage fish of different species to give stocked fish a jump start on growth and to boost the productivity in less fertile fisheries.

“A lot of our lakes are getting older and are less productive than in years past,” Laird said. “There also may be some lakes that have a shad die-off from a hard winter. In these situations, we can supplement the lake’s forage species with new fish to serve as broodstock and help rebuild the forage base.”

Threadfin shad stockings have increased in recent years to help boost forage populations, with roughly 232,000 threadfin shad stocked directly into Arkansas reservoirs, either through hatchery trucks or through nursery ponds connected to the lakes.

“We also have to provide food for the predator fish we grow, like largemouths and crappie,” Laird said. “We will grow fathead minnows and golden shiners to feed the hatchery fish, and in some cases, we’ll grow a crop of fathead minnows in a nursery pond near a lake, let them grow, and then stock fingerling bass into the pond in June to create advanced bass fingerlings and yearlings. These bass are much larger when they go into the lake.”

Laird stresses that stocking sport fish is not a magic bullet to dramatically increase the amount of fish in an already healthy system.
“I’ve been told by our aquatic habitat biologists that on a bad year, the spawning habitat on Beaver Lake alone still can produce 7 to 8 million bass fingerlings,” Laird said. “Even if we converted an entire hatchery to nothing but largemouth bass production, we would have a hard time matching that kind of production. And that’s just one lake in Arkansas.”

Instead, stockings play a vital role in boosting populations in smaller bodies of water and those that lack the amount of spawning habitat available to withstand extreme angling pressure. 

“We can also work to boost some of the genetic component of some fisheries, like with our Florida bass stocking program,” Laird said. “The introduction of Florida bass genetics can help increase growth rates and overall size of fish, but the actual percentage of pure Florida bass is still going to be relatively low because the fertile lakes where we stock them are already producing high rates of largemouths.”

Another area where stocked fish shine is through the many fishing events and promotions the AGFC does to introduce new anglers to the world of fishing. More than 271,000 catchable-size catfish and 597,575 catchable-size rainbow trout were stocked in 2018, most of which were placed in smaller bodies of water specifically to hook new anglers with some fast success during the year.

“Nearly all of our catfish are going to fishing derbies, Family and Community Fishing locations and smaller ponds to help recruit new anglers and give people in Arkansas the opportunity to fish wherever they live,” Laird said. “Many of the catchable-size trout go to the same locations during winter when the water is cold enough to support them. We also stock quite a few catchable-size trout in tailwater fisheries below Lakes Ouachita, Greeson, Hamilton and Catherine for anglers to enjoy trout fishing without driving all the way to the White or Little Red rivers.”
  
Fish Stocked in 2018 by Species:

Northern-Strain Largemouth Bass
Fingerling — 401,298
Yearling — 24,859
Adult — 120

Florida-Strain Largemouth Bass
Fingerling — 1,015,413
Yearling — 154,931
Adult — 2,320

Smallmouth Bass
Fingerling — 53,175
Adult — 72

White Crappie
Fingerling — 120,000
Adult — 400

Black Crappie
Yearling — 22,901
Adult — 250

Blacknose Crappie
Yearling — 87,278
Adult — 250

Bluegill
Fingerling — 501,581
Adult — 8,739

Redear Sunfish
Fingerling — 479,300
Adult — 150

Channel Catfish
Fingerling — 273,864
Yearling — 319,552
Catchable-size — 289,376

Flathead Catfish
Fingerling — 8,695
Yearling — 14,664

Rainbow Trout
Catchable-size — 597,575

Striped Bass
Fingerling — 515,036

Hybrid Striped Bass
Fingerling — 49,219

Walleye 
Fingerling — 716,510

Saugeye
Fingerling — 31,615

Fathead Minnows
Adult — 649,000

Threadfin Shad
Yearling — 187,106
Adult — 45,188

Golden Shiners
Fingerling — 265,447

The post AGFC hatcheries produce more than 7.4 million fish in 2018 appeared first on Arkansas Game & Fish Commission.

Randy Zellers

Assistant Chief of Communications

LITTLE ROCK — That Christmas tree that stands proudly above gifts on Christmas morning has plenty of giving left to do if you’re an angler. The Arkansas Game and Fish Commission has established drop-off locations for all leftover Christmas trees near popular fishing destinations to give them a new life as fish habitat.

The drop-off locations act just like a “take-a-penny, leave-a-penny tray” at a cashier’s station, only it’s for fish. Anyone who wants to drop off their natural Christmas tree can just take it to a location and leave it. And any angler who wants to take the trees and sink them in the lakes where they are located can do so. Anglers should bring their own rope, parachute cord and cinder blocks to weight the trees and sink them where they wish. 

Artificial trees are not allowed at drop-off locations, and all ornaments, tinsel and lights should be removed before being dropped off. 

Christmas trees typically only last a year or two before all that’s left is the main trunk, but large groups of trees can attract bait fish and sportfish long after the smaller branches and needles have rotted away.

Trees can be dropped off at any of the following locations until the end of January:

Central Arkansas

• Arkansas River – Verizon Access beneath the I-30 Bridge
• Cox Creek Lake – Cox Creek Lake Public Access
• Greers Ferry Lake – Sandy Beach (Heber Springs), Devils Fork Recreation Area and Choctaw Recreation Area (Choctaw-Clinton)
• Lake Conway – Lawrence Landing Access
• Harris Brake Lake – Chittman Hill Access
• Lake Overcup – Lake Overcup Landing
• Lake Barnett – Reed Access
• Lake Hamilton – Andrew Hulsey State Fish Hatchery Access Area

East Arkansas

• Cook’s Lake – Potlatch Conservation Education Center at 625 Cook’s Lake Rd., Casscoe, or the bus lot across from Grand Avenue United Methodist Church in Stuttgart.

Northeast Arkansas

• Jonesboro – Craighead Forest Park Lake boat ramp
• Lake Bono – Boat Ramp Access
• Lake Walcott – Crowley’s Ridge State Park Boat Ramp Access

Northwest Arkansas

• Beaver Lake – Highway 12 Access and AGFC Don Roufa Hwy 412 Access
• Lake Elmdale – Boat Ramp Access
• Bob Kidd Lake – Boat Ramp Access
• Crystal Lake – Boat Ramp Access

Southeast Arkansas

• Lake Chicot – Connerly Bayou Access Area
• Lake Monticello – Hunger Run Access

Southwest Arkansas

• Bois d’Arc Lake – Kidd’s Landing or Hatfield Access
• Millwood Lake – Cottonshed, White Cliffs Recreation Areas and the Millwood State Park ramp on the point
• Dierks Lake – Jefferson Ridge South Recreation Area
• De Queen Lake – Any U.S. Army Corps of Engineers boat ramp
• Gillham Lake – Any U.S. Army Corps of Engineers boat ramp
• Lake Greeson – New Cowhide Cove and Self Creek Recreation areas
• Camden – AGFC Regional Office on Ben Lane, next to the National Guard Armory
• Upper White Oak Lake – Upper Jack’s Landing
• Magnolia – Columbia County Road Department Yard on Highway 371
• El Dorado – City recycling center drop-offs: one behind Arby’s and one on South Jackson
• Smackover – Recycling Drop-Off Center (these will be transported to El Dorado)
• South Fork Lake – South Fork Lake Access
• Terre Noire Lake – Terre Noire Lake Access
• Hope – AGFC Regional Office on U.S. Highway 67 East

The post Add a little Christmas spirit to your favorite fishing hole appeared first on Arkansas Game & Fish Commission.