TPWD Responds to Stocking Series
North Central Texas Prairies & Lakes Region and Piney Woods Region Fish Stocking
FROM Marcos DeJesus
I understand. Thank you for clarifying. Stocking is one of three main tools used to manage fisheries. While we have a structured process to justify fish stockings across the state, the local biologists develop objective-based management plans for each managed reservoir. The specific scenarios presented in those plans dictate if there’s a need and what is requested for stocking. The basic process for stocking decisions can be shared easily, but to analyze disparities by region or sites over years will not reveal particular Inland Fisheries stocking motives accurately, in my opinion. It’s not black and white. I’ll let the biologists and Kirk formulate more specific responses.
FROM Dan Bennett
Thank you for the opportunity to review the article. I must say that it looks like Chat GPT may make fewer mistakes than most real reporters !
One point that the article doesn’t really touch on, that I think is of particular importance, is that different species are stocked for different reasons. (E.g. to restore or establish a population, put and take (channel catfish/trout) in smaller impoundments, or influence genetic composition in the case of largemouth bass, etc.). These reasons (referenced below from our website) greatly influence overall numbers and locations stocked each year, and species sometimes has an influence on production priorities and timing from year to year.
With regards to the note below the article about part two being published soon, it might help provide more detail in the article if we could get a better idea what stocking disparities are being referenced? There have been several internal changes in our production and stocking priorities in recent years for several reasons, and I think the opportunity to answer questions specific to your observations could provide some background information regarding why certain decisions were made and why differences may have been observed vs. past stocking activity. Brian VanZee coordinates our statewide stocking plan each year and would probably be the best resource for that type of information: (254) 867-7974, [email protected]
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I can see how our stocking practices and developments in the last several years may have resulted in some of your observations. I thought describing how our stocking process works from behind the scenes might help at least explain a few reasons why you may be seeing what you are seeing in our final #’s reported for each species stocked. Let me know if the book below sparks any further questions.
For largemouth bass, our stocking goals are to maintain or improve the ultimate growth potential within the population by introducing Florida genetics. Of course, the pure Florida’s and first generation (F1) hybrids have the greatest chance of reaching a size of over 8#’s. However, the # of fish stocked into an existing bass population that actually become adult bass is very low compared to what is naturally spawned. A study at Toledo Bend found that tagged stocked fingerlings comprised about 1% to 3% of young bass in select locations two-weeks after stocking, and after that were impossible to locate among “young-of-the-year” bass naturally spawned in the lake. Our stockings do very little at all to impact the overall number of fish in a lake. So, our goal with stocking Florida Bass is to incrementally improve or maintain those genetics within a bass population, and reservoirs with a proven ability to produce catches of trophy bass (>8#’s) rank higher on the priority list to receive stockings. We determine the ability of a lake to produce these trophy bass from a combination of population surveys, tournament and angler reports, record submissions, and ShareLunker entries. This is the main reason our ShareLunker program was revised to try and get more data from fish down to 8#’s, instead of only 13# bass like several years ago. If you look at the number of ShareLunker entries for the top 25 lakes below it helps to explain why Lake Fork gets stocked every year. In my mind, Lake Fork is simply an outlier being a nationally recognized trophy bass fishery with a highly restrictive slot-limit that simply can’t be compared to any other reservoir. The number of lunker entries for the top 25 lakes also helps to explain why more fish are stocked in East Texas as well in addition to the fact that there is simply more water and larger reservoirs requiring higher stocking densities in the eastern part of the state. Population density around reservoirs is often a distant consideration when stocking fish because people are willing to travel a considerable distance to fish certain lakes. We primarily look at our angler “creel” surveys to factor in the estimated hours of fishing effort for different species when prioritizing stocking. If you look at the two maps below, you’ll see the reported home residence (zip code) for anglers visiting Lake Fork and Ray Roberts. Though the duration of the survey was different 1-year vs. 3-months (spring), the geographic distribution of visitation to Lake Fork is much greater, and the main visitors to Lake Fork are from the DFW area.
With regards to Ray Roberts specifically, my management goal since I arrived at the district office in 2016 was to increase the frequency of Florida Bass stockings to try and increase the overall Florida bass alleles, and trophy potential, within the population. I felt that some of the gaps in time between stockings were too great for a lake capable of producing large bass, particularly the 15# record caught in 2015. Of course, all our district biologists are basically competing for available bass fingerlings each year; roughly 4 to 5 million bass are stocked each year, but the annual request from biologists is typically double that number. So as a biologist, I simply cannot justify requesting stocking each year unless I have a unique situation like establishing a new bass fishery at Lake Bois d’Arc or having a lake that produces catches of hundreds of ShareLunkers regularly like Lake Fork or O.H. Ivie. This why I am often encouraging anglers to submit reports of bass catches over 8#’s to the ShareLunker program. I use those reports to move my lake up the priority list as you can see in my request this year below for Ray Roberts. This year I was able to get Ray Roberts up to #4 priority in the state on the stocking list, and we received 347,062 of the 347,560 requested. Our stocking procedures also changed about 5 or 6 years ago from a 100 per/acre stocking density to a 1,000 fish per/shoreline km density. That procedural change was done to more accurately reflect the available habitat in reservoirs since bass are more of a littoral (shore-based) species, and it also resulted in our ability to stock more lakes around the state each year. However, it has also inadvertently done away with the high-density stockings of 500,000 or more fingerlings we used to get in some reservoirs. For example, the size of Fork and Ray Roberts is similar, but the shoreline perimeter of Ray Roberts is only about half that of Lake Fork due to the complex shoreline of Fork. That factor alone may help answer your question as to the disparity in total number of fish stocked at Fork vs. Ray Roberts. Obviously, the change comes with some negatives for certain lakes, although it does help disperse fish out around the state to a greater extent and gets us further down the request list each year.
Continues …
EDITOR’S NOTE: These are verbatim – copy-paste. No bolding. No editing.
READ PREVIOUS STORIES ON STOCKING BY TPWD –
- TEXAS TEA LEAVES – Hybrid Bass Stocking North Central Texas and DFW Specifically
- STOCKING PART 3
- STOCKING PART 2
- STOCKING PART 1
- TPWD FISH STOCKING INTRODUCTION by CHATGPT
In the next post, this email continues. We learn about hybrid bass stocking TO BE CONTINUED …
Category: Bass on Fly, Science and Environmental, TECHNICAL
