TPWD Fish Stocking by The Numbers
PART 3
My Thesis:
TPWD does not stock Texas Prairies & Lakes and the Piney Woods lakes with proper ranking of population proximity to the water bodies they currently stock with fish. And historically, the TPWD stocking program of green bass is slanted toward favoring less populated regions of East Texas. This is contra to the TPWD “Core Mission.”
BE sure to catch up! READ: STOCKING Part 1 and STOCKING Part 2
How Did This Happen?
It is impossible for a civilian fly fisher to get inside the walls of any TPWD office, and be the fly-on-the-wall when the topic of stocking North Central Texas lakes comes up. But as an experienced government, small “g” local government employee, here’s how I think this happens.
This kind of gap in reality and TPWD happens for a simple reason, my word “simple,” and it happens because things in TPWD were done in a particular way, and the way it was, with few exceptions, is the way it is. We love our TPWD job, and we want keep it, so we keep our heads below the ground in your foxhole and by no means rock any boats. If Lake Fork has gotten a million bass, Lake Fork gets another million bass and so on, and so on. No matter what, Lake Fork, what I am labeling a “Texas Magnet Lake,” gets its million bass, and the perpetual motion of fishermen to Lake Fork never ever ends, and is never challenged by any other lake in the Prairies & Lakes Region.
Numbers Don’t Lie
Putting the numbers in perspective – I only measure from 2019-2024, and August 1, 2024 to be precise. A later article on the Stocking of Hybrid or Palmetto and Sunshine bass sheds light on regional lakes that have been stocked with these great but non-reproducing fish. The numbers for hybrid stocking are also notable, but where you see ZEROS below, you can bet these lakes were shifted to MAJOR stocking of hybrid bass. OR, they are in the process NOW – of quietly (I can’t find any News Releases) shifting from green bass to hybrid bass stockings.
Scientifically, a lot can happen in any given year, in any hatchery in the huge State of Texas! Since 2019, we have had a “Snowmageddon” event, the US Pandemic, record heat and successes and failures in the TPWD’s stocking programs. IF this were simple? everyone would be hatching fish.
GREEN FAMILY LARGEMOUTH BASS – NOT INCLUDING SMALLMOUTH BASS
We will hear from TPWD in a later article! For my purposes of fishing more than punching numbers on a keyboard, I am lumping bass into a broad category of “GREEN” bass. I hope to get a followup on what the differences are between a Lone Star Largemouth, a Northern Largemouth and a Florida Strain bass are, and confident TPWD will clarify that for us.
- Lewisville Lake – 306,174 Green Bass
- Ray Roberts – 639,951
- Eagle Mountain – 18,989 All ShareLunker Fingerlings
- Lake Lavon – 66,241
- Lake Fork – 2,358,866
- Ray Hubbard – 74,793
- Tawakoni – 0
- Whitney – 0
- Toledo Bend – 3,087,884
- Cedar Creek <1 stocking> – 435,765
TPWD RESPONDS
TPWD has been responding to this series via e mail, in between days, as this series is going online. In a future, EXTENSIVE and THOROUGH response from TPWD, they will explain in straight forward terms, how these numbers come about and the scientific variables, and the lobbying they deal with within their programs. It is truly amazing to read, and will let some of the hot air out of my reporting thus far.
Category: Body-Mind-Soul, Life Observed, Science and Environmental, TECHNICAL
