SPEAKER_00 0:00

I am Jeff Foxworthy, and welcome to Gamekeeper Podcast. If you want to learn more about farming for wildlife and habitat management, then buddy, you are in the right place. Join the Gamekeeper crew direct from Monte Oak Land Enhancement Studio as they discuss the latest wildlife and habitat management practices, news, and of course honey. There's no telling what you'll learn, but I'm gonna tell you, I bet it's interesting. Enjoy.

SPEAKER_07 0:26

I mean three, two, one.

SPEAKER_08 0:28

Okay, everybody. I don't know if we're gonna be able to get through this one. Um uh springtime. It's springtime. We're laughing toxic leading.

SPEAKER_01 0:35

Sleep deprivation is setting in already. That's exactly right. Sleep deprivation. It's a brutal this time of year, and I've got a month left.

SPEAKER_08 0:42

Yeah, you do. Dudley, you got a smile on your face, a twinkle in your eye. Yeah. You look like you're excited.

SPEAKER_05 0:48

It's spring. It's spring. How can you just be excited?

SPEAKER_08 0:50

Spring has sprung.

SPEAKER_06 0:51

Yep. Yeah, it came quick.

SPEAKER_08 0:53

We got Mac 3.0 over here. 3.5, I should say.

SPEAKER_07 0:57

Yeah. How's tennis going, Mac? You know, uh about as good as my turkey season so far. Oh. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:06

Let us know next time we'll come cheer for you. That might help. Bobby's just been playing his violin for you so much. Yeah. Yeah, we do need to go over there and watch him play.

SPEAKER_08 1:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:15

We can make an episode about that. I live through the the I live through the years of watching my kids compete with Mac, and he is a relentless competitor, too.

SPEAKER_05 1:26

It's fun. Relentless. Hopefully you don't mess up your Achilles tendons.

SPEAKER_08 1:31

So are you playing, are you a like a better than a 3.5 or are you not a 3.5?

SPEAKER_07 1:36

I feel like I'm playing up a little bit. Uh, but I I I go in confident, kind of like in the turkey woods, and then most of the time get disappointed. But you just started really playing tennis hardcore, didn't you? I did.

SPEAKER_06 1:48

So this is like a new thing. Yeah. It's another guy. That's pretty, it's pretty good to be a 3.5. It's just you're just starting it, isn't it?

SPEAKER_08 1:55

I you know, I don't know.

SPEAKER_06 1:57

Y'all should play.

SPEAKER_08 1:59

No, I probably shouldn't.

SPEAKER_01 2:00

I'm a one point o'er.

SPEAKER_06 2:01

Nah.

SPEAKER_01 2:02

You need to play. Daniel's Caroline's who you need to play. She Daniel, the first time they played, he was like, oh my gosh, that was embarrassing. My girlfriend just whipped my tail so bad in tennis.

SPEAKER_07 2:15

That's how my wife is. She could run me over the court.

SPEAKER_08 2:19

Well, so today's podcast. Turning to I'm looking over here on the couch. We got we got a man that I have wanted to have on the podcast since we started this. His name is Barry Smith. In the house. Sound of horns. That's right. No introduction. He is the man. He's a legend from the state of Alabama when it comes to fish and a lot of other things, I might add. But but Barry is a fisheries scientist. He had a career in fisheries, started with the state of Alabama, moved on to private industry, the American Sport Fish Hatcher. You and Don Keller founded that and worked your tails off for a number of years. He's the first guy I ever knew about to kill a turkey with a 410. He did it. I bet he did it 25 years ago. 20 years ago.

SPEAKER_05 3:02

With lead. Yeah.

SPEAKER_08 3:04

I mean that's a big difference. That is a big difference. Basically, all he does is fly fish. And he, I mean, he likes challenges. And he is a when it comes to hunting and fishing, he's he's good. Yep. He's really good.

SPEAKER_06 3:16

He's got the salt water down too, doesn't he?

SPEAKER_01 3:18

He does. He could be on the dosakers bottle.

SPEAKER_08 3:23

So you you hear Bear, he's very soft spoken. But let me just say this. So he's very soft spoken. He is a southern gentleman. He's a Christian. He's a deacon at the church. In Montgomery, the the the Methodist church there, he ran the camera crew. He just if the church doors are open, he's there. Great guy. But let me just tell y'all, if you're in the bow of the boat with him and he spots a red fish out there, and he tells you, there it is, it's 36 inches. There it is. And you make a couple of false casts, and then you lay your crab at the tail of that fish instead of the mouth of that fish, you will get the worst cussing you ever got in your life. He changes his whole personal personality.

SPEAKER_01 4:09

I've seen you do that on occasion, Bobby, in the bass pond or on the turkey woods. Barry, we're glad to have you here.

SPEAKER_08 4:17

Thank you. Thank you. This one's been a long time coming. It is.

SPEAKER_03 4:20

I've had several invites, and unfortunately, it's just been uh I'm a busy man, so it's hard to get away sometimes.

SPEAKER_08 4:27

So the fish pond world, there's just it's a when guys can manage their pond and do it right, fertilize, stock the right fish, continuously, I guess, stock some kind of feeder fish, it's a whole different world, isn't it?

SPEAKER_03 4:41

It is, and a lot of people don't realize that, like a lot of other things, you know, they think it's you you just got it and it just magically develops itself. And occasionally, by accident that happens, but most of the time if you've got really good fishing in your lake or pond, you put in a lot of effort to achieve that. Yeah. It's just like having some turkey woods, you know.

SPEAKER_01 5:04

You know, I've I've said it forever in just my top material possession in life is land. And you know, doing this, you know, hence gamekeepers. And I've said it forever. People that are looking at their first piece of land or buying a piece of land or getting a fish, I the number one thing I would do. Looking back on my experience, is build the fish pond.

SPEAKER_05 5:27

I can't agree more. I mean, uh, you know, growing up turkey hunting, uh, that was the first thing we thought of when we were coming out of the woods was let's go catch some fish.

SPEAKER_08 5:37

So, Barry, how did you get into the fisheries business?

SPEAKER_03 5:41

It's kind of a long story. You know, I started out uh not really sure whether I was gonna get to go to college or not, but I kind of worked my way through. You can't do that today, but back in the old days when things were a little cheaper, you could you could do that. And uh I was interested both in wildlife and fisheries, and uh and actually I started to get a a dual degree, but I kind of gravitated toward uh fisheries, and uh hey, lots of things happened between now and back in the old days. So yeah, here I here I am.

SPEAKER_08 6:13

A couple weeks ago we had a guy on that was responsible for restocking turkeys across the state of of of Mississippi. And when you worked in Alabama, y y'all were doing some restocking some fisheries around the state pretty heavily at that time as well, weren't you?

SPEAKER_03 6:28

We were, yeah. Back when I was with the state, we uh we were interested in a lot of things and a lot of things that that at that time was kind of progressive. So, you know, we we wanted to introduce Florida bass, for instance, and uh get those in a lot of the reservoirs and and then uh we were interested in hybrid striving bass and and we we kind of developed that program and uh you know we we were known for a lot of things way back in the day, but uh basically we were we were into pond management or lake management, private lake management. And uh a lot of those things came from uh from Auburn where most of us went to school over there to get educated in in fishery science and and we just kind of proceeded from there. And so we've we did a lot of public water stockings back in the day. And my my mentor and my boss at that time was Sam Spencer, and he was a very progressive thinker, and uh we got into a lot of things that uh that just had not been done before, and a lot of those were very successful.

SPEAKER_08 7:35

You know, this time of year we're thinking turkeys. Yeah. But there's a lot of people that are thinking crappies. Oh, a hundred percent.

SPEAKER_06 7:42

So that's why I'm such a bad crappie person.

SPEAKER_08 7:47

Barry, can you tell us what's going on with the crappies right now and the temperature guys need to think about if if they're for like public w rivers and stuff?

SPEAKER_03 7:56

Well, there are a couple of things that are associated with crappie spawning, and crappie spawning is one of the times when you back in the day is when we used to find those fish up on the banks, both in private ponds and in public waters, or at least trying to move up to where they can begin spawning. And so that happens in the springtime, and uh, it happens this time of year. And typically in March around the full moon, and the moon does have some influence on spawning in a lot of different species. So, you know, a week before, a week after the full moon, we're coming up on the full moon now. And uh during that time and when the temperatures begin to elevate to what the threshold for spawning is for these fish, then that's that starts in the time. And then it it lasts for maybe a month or so. And then uh as as that ends, and the crappie move off the bank and they move out to deeper water, and all you who are crappie fishermen know how this works, and you you go look for some treetops that are in ten or twelve, fifteen feet of water, depending on what lake you're fishing in. And uh and you find those things after they spawn, post-spawn, all congregated in a in a school. But what a lot of people don't know is that before the spawning takes place, the males move in first, just kind of like the bass. And then they kind of prepare the beds. And so you the area for the females to come in. But the females are not far from the males. And if if you're fishing in a reservoir or or a pond that's that's got sloughs or little pockets in there, a lot of times these fish are schooled up out in those pockets, out in the middle of those things, deep. And if you had a depth finder, you can find those things out there, you know, while they're schooled up before they move in. And you hear a lot of people say, Well, yeah, call me some black crappie today. You know, those things uh those things are just so black, they got uh they got black fins and stuff. Well that's not necessarily black crappie. That's the fact that a lot of species of fish uh have characteristics that develop during the spawning season. And this melanistic or black color that develops into the fins are primarily males. And so when you're on the bank and catch these things, you know, everybody think, uh, I got me a black crappie, but really it's just a male. It could be a white crappie, but they they develop some melanistic characteristics like that.

SPEAKER_01 10:21

How about that?

SPEAKER_03 10:22

And then a female doesn't turn black. Okay, she's she doesn't have any melanistic characteristics. And so this is this is a little thing that uh as a as a scientist we call sexual dimorphism. Little term I'll throw out to you.

SPEAKER_05 10:37

I've heard I've heard it before. I heard that one time. I think I've heard deadly. I know I've made the mistake on the black crappie in the past. Right. As you say it's darker, you assume it's a black crappie.

SPEAKER_01 10:48

So what you've stopped for people is black crappie, though, right? Primarily.

SPEAKER_03 10:52

Yeah, there are two different species of crappie, a black crappie and a white crappie. Right. The black crappie do better in in really in deep reservoirs. The white crappie are found more likely in river run impoundments, like in like in the Alabama River, for instance, in our state. Right. And uh some of the bigger rivers over here would have more of the white crappie in there. So yeah, there's so there's two different species, but if we're stocking it in your pond, toxic, for instance, right, we would provide black crappie. They'd do better in the ponds.

SPEAKER_08 11:20

I thought. But you gotta be careful putting crappie in a pond, don't you?

SPEAKER_03 11:24

You do. And this is a this is a mistake that's commonly made by by pond owners that really don't know any better, you know. Yeah, all of us have have fished ponds that have good brim, good bass, and good crappie populations. Okay. Sometimes those happen by accident. But if you really want it to happen for intention, then you come in and and don't let your buddy come back from the river and dump a bucket full of mature males and females in your pond.

SPEAKER_04 11:58

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 11:59

Because this is a time of the year that's really critical for that. Because the crappie are spawning right now. But the bass haven't spawned yet. Okay, they're going to. Their their primary spawn will be in April. But the bass is what controls everything in your pond or your private lake. Okay, they control the population, whatever's in there. What happens when you have crappie if you put in adults is that they spawn almost a month before the bass do. And those little crappie fry, as they develop into finglings, are never small enough for the younger bass to eat, and so they overpopulate. And this is what causes the major problem. If you come in and stock finglings in there, you don't have that problem.

SPEAKER_01 12:48

Conversely, the brim is the perfect partner because they spawned like a month or whatever after the bass.

SPEAKER_03 12:53

That's right.

SPEAKER_01 12:54

And the little teeny bass brim fry were perfect for the bass.

SPEAKER_03 12:57

Exactly.

SPEAKER_01 12:58

Exactly. It's the time and other he taught me that, so I can act smart in front of him. He taught me that forever ago, so it was from him. And so you did, though. Um I just always wanted to do it. There was a place that was, I thought, perfect for to kind of create an oxbow or natural type lake, because I knew it would flood occasionally, once every 10 years, maybe a little bit. But it has some a little bit of creep drainage in it, not much, but um I let them handle that. And so, you know, we didn't think it was going to turn out. They stocked Bram and Crappie first, and then there was so much decaying matter, and then the acidity was acidity was so high, he said, I'm just gonna wait. I'm I'm scared you might have lost, but I'm you know, they literally, that's the that's the kind of service and honesty and integrity Hamilton said, Well, drove all the way there a couple of hours to deliver the fish when the guy tested the water, called Bear, he said, Don't charge him anything, just take them back. It's too big a risk to stock them. And lo and behold, he said, they might, they might not, but it's just too big a risk to charge you. And put, and you were gonna put stripers in there with the bass to maintain, you know, kind of keep the population down more. And turns out, I think by luck, that we didn't do that. Some bass got in there naturally, but it also, when you shocked it and texted it for it, it had some of those Gremlin stuff in there. So I think it naturally is keeping the population more in check. And it's a, you know, this thing's a half a mile long. Bobby's fished, it loves to fish though. But we got lucky and it turned out great and kind of replicated, you know, what you would find in a natural oxboat lake. And so we love the place. It's a great lake. Now, is it gonna be our best lake to catch a giant bass? No, but there's a healthy population, and they're getting along. And I think you can tell me my grinel probably you're helping me.

SPEAKER_03 14:41

That's that's a predator that controls some of that overpopulation. So that's true. Can those things really live in the mud, dried out mud for months? Not dried out mud, but they but they can live in a lake that doesn't look like it's inhabitable. Yeah. So these are these can be air breathers. And so if you've got what you think no other fish would live in, a adrenal or a bowfin can can live in that muck and stuff. Well, they can bust a spinnerbait.

SPEAKER_05 15:08

And they're so prehistoric looking.

SPEAKER_08 15:12

Yeah. They're lot they they will bust a spinnerbait, but they're you don't want to be handling them.

SPEAKER_01 15:18

Yeah. They're like catching a saltwater fish. They're so kind of, you know, so much energy.

SPEAKER_03 15:23

Yeah, don't try to lip one.

SPEAKER_10 15:26

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SPEAKER_03 16:46

Yeah, and uh and uh the next thing to spawn in there that's that's native is is the is the shellcracker.

unknown 16:52

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 16:52

Or red ear. It's commonly called a red ear, but most people call them shellcrackers just because they they they do eat chink.

SPEAKER_05 17:01

I grew up calling them chinkapen.

SPEAKER_03 17:03

And then that's that's a that's a common name, especially if you get Mississippi or Edge into Louisiana, you know, they're all chinkapins in Louisiana. There's no shellcreck.

SPEAKER_01 17:12

That's the unsung hero of a great pond, too, because they're they're not the same. You don't necessarily don't eat at the fish feed like the bluegills do as much. And and then, you know, you don't really catch them a lot on crickets, it's worms primarily, isn't it? Worms primarily, that's right. So, but boy, they are just delicious table fairy and so much fun to catch.

SPEAKER_03 17:30

Big handsome fish, too. Yeah, they are. They are. And and the thing about shellcracker that most people don't realize, and and if if you catch some this spring, this is something you can do, okay? When you cut that fish's throat open and look down inside there, you'll see that there's a set of of molars top and bottom that they use to crush those snails with or any other type of mollusk. And you you've you've caught a thousand of 'em, but I'll bet you you've never cut one open to look at that. So next time next time you have one, just just take your scissors or a knife and just cut them open and look in there. You'll see two pads way back in the throat there. And each of those pads have some little uh tubercular stuff on there that that are hardened. And when they suck that shell that shell in from a snail or any type of mollusk that they can get their mouth on, they just take it and crush it. And then they spit the shell out, and then they absorb the meat that's inside there.

SPEAKER_06 18:36

But you say that shell cracker. Shell cracker. Oh, that's true. It makes a lot more sense now.

SPEAKER_01 18:43

It seems like um, if I remember right, you were usually used 10%. Is that about right? That's about right. Yeah, when you're stocking, say, the brim or the you know, the 90% brim, 10% shell cracker, tinker pen, whatever. It just seems like they maintain that. They don't go away, they will get overpopulated, but it seems like if you do the shocking test or you fish, they seem to be so like in balance all the time almost, you know?

SPEAKER_03 19:10

They do. And one of the reasons is because the shellcracker typically have one primary spawn, and that's during the spring. And they spawn a month before the bluegill begin to bed. So there is some bedding activity there. Occasionally you'll get a little crossing there that's not un unusual to see one. It's uh that's got both bluegill and shellcracker in it. You see that occasionally. But typically, yeah, it's it's a hybrid. But typically they spawn a month full moon a month before the bluegill began to begin to bed.

SPEAKER_05 19:43

And are they are they usually deeper than the than bluegill when they're spawning?

SPEAKER_03 19:48

Not necessarily. Yeah. What what you will find is that these things will be uh in uh little points that have treetops or something. They'll get in those treetops. If you were to if you were to lower that lake and look at it, say, like in in June, okay, after the bluegill have made their initial spawn, you'll see the difference in the beds. Okay. The the shellcracker will make a bed as big as a bass.

unknown 20:13

Wow.

SPEAKER_03 20:13

And the bluegill will make a small bed, maybe like a teacup, a little saucer for a cup. But the but the shellcracker, especially the bigger ones that that get closer to a three-quarters to a pound, will make a bed that will be bigger than a dinner plate. And they and they will not they will not touch each other. The bluegill will bed right next to each other. And you see those beds, you you've seen them in clear ponds, they'll they'll be ten or fifteen or twenty of them or more, and they'll all be touching each other, just one after another. But the shellcracker, they don't touch. They may be close, but you'll see four or five beds, maybe more than that, but it'll it'll be on a point. Typically they can be deeper than bluegill, but they'll or if there's a treetop or some limbs or something out there, they'll get in amongst that and they'll bed inside there. And so they're they're really never in like a bluegill would pick a nice flat place. And I I've seen fifty or more beds as you have too in uh you know, in these ponds. But shellcracker are different from that. And uh and the other thing that shellcracker like is they like ponds with vegetation. Okay. We don't like vegetation in them. Hard to fish. But some what we call as a scientist macroinvertebrates. These bigger insects get on these this type of vegetation. So, just for instance, if you've got carrot or you got some other something besides algae in there that grows in there, that's an attachment surface for these insects that shellcracker eat. They'll get snails on there, but they'll also have these larger insects that'll attach to that. And uh that's what that's what shellcracker likes.

SPEAKER_01 22:00

Got kind of an isolated spot. You know, if it's I guess the whole lake's covered in something, then they're just spread out randomly anyway. But if you've got a concentrated spot, then that might be your best place to try fishing too, wouldn't it?

SPEAKER_03 22:12

It could be. Sure could be. I mean, we we see this a lot, not just in private ponds, but in public reservoirs. For instance, I go up into Tennessee to fish in the spring, usually the first full moon in May, and we catch shellcracker up there. I mean, those that are over a pound, some of them pound and a half or even closer to two pounds. Big, huge shellcracker. Wow.

SPEAKER_05 22:35

Yeah, they seem to get bigger in a like a natural environment, whereas bluegill, you you almost have to manage heavily to get them really big. Uh and I that's just my experience.

SPEAKER_03 22:47

Well, that's that's a correct experience. It's exactly what happens. And if they've got a good bit of vegetation in in a situation where they live, there's a lot of big succulent insects for them to eat in addition to snails that get onto these.

SPEAKER_01 23:01

I can't remember catching one at a at the fish feeder.

SPEAKER_03 23:06

No. They they don't they don't feed on artificial feed very well. You can you can catch some occasionally eating it, but most of the time they don't.

SPEAKER_08 23:15

So, Barry, my dad was a big fisherman and and he just loved shell crackers. But he always used porcupine quills.

SPEAKER_03 23:23

Right.

SPEAKER_08 23:23

And and would bounce them just right where they would set up. But and you would watch this as a kid, I can remember just trying, and and I could not hardly see the movement of the, but he'd say, You got one.

SPEAKER_09 23:34

Right.

SPEAKER_08 23:34

But but so how is that fish taking it differently where you need something so sensitive as a porcupine quill to So you're referring to using using it as a cork.

SPEAKER_05 23:44

As a cork as a quack, my listeners know.

SPEAKER_01 23:47

My dad did. My uncle, great uncle, and my granddaddy both use porcupine quills for brimming. Yeah. Right.

SPEAKER_08 23:53

So I thought it was just a shell cracker thing, maybe it's subject.

SPEAKER_03 23:56

It's not back in back in the day, back in the old days when you were you used to go with your granddaddy, you know, back a long time ago. Yeah, it's a real long time ago. And so that a lot of people use this. You know, they use those quills for that, and then you could watch that quill it just stand up. But one thing about shellcracker is they they don't hit that thing hard like a bluegill will. Okay, there's a difference in the way they feed. The shellcracker sucks that up rather than just going after it and and biting it is where you can really feel that thing. So a lot of times, just the way we fish those things, a lot of times, is is we'll we'll use a drop shot technique. So you put a little lead on the end of your and come up from that just a little bit, maybe 12 inches or so, and hook a little fly or hook a little worm on there, whatever. And when you drag that through, a lot of times that thing will just stop. And then you have to pull back on it, you feel resistance, and you go ahead and set the hook, you got something on on there. But a bluegill hits that thing, he hits it.

SPEAKER_01 25:00

It's gone.

SPEAKER_03 25:00

It's gone. And you can feel that really well. So there's a difference in the way that they feed, and a difference in the way that they uh things that they eat. Making me want to go fishing. Yeah, honestly. Yeah.

SPEAKER_08 25:12

So Laney just got a pond. Yeah, just just got a place, just got a five-acre lake. Yeah, so cool. Uh what would you say to somebody that that's just got a just got one? And I don't think Laney, has there been any management ever done on the uh not that I know of.

SPEAKER_06 25:26

You know, it's been there, I know it's been there probably since the 40s, so it's an old lake. Cool. Uh in a in a river bottom, and it's pretty deep. Um doesn't flood there, though. No, it does not flood. It doesn't flood at all.

SPEAKER_08 25:38

Do you need to does he need to shock it and see what's going on?

SPEAKER_03 25:41

That's the best thing to do. You know, you can get an indication out of that if if you fished it pretty heavily. Landy, probably not you. Not yet. Invite some friends over that know how to fish and and get those get those people out there and fish not only for a bass, but look for your bluegill and shellcracker too. You know, the time to catch shellcrackers in the spring.

SPEAKER_09 26:04

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 26:05

Because once you pass that spawning time, those things are who knows where, but typically out in deeper water that you would never even think about fishing in.

SPEAKER_06 26:14

So would you just kind of do it like a wildlife survey? I mean, just X amount of this is how many days we fished, how many times I fished, and this is the breakdown of the species.

SPEAKER_03 26:23

Yeah, keep track of what you catch and the size range of what you of what you've harvested out of there during your fishing experience so that you know what size of bluegill you've got. And and same thing if you catch any shellcracker, but don't fish with crickets, you know, shell crackers like worms.

SPEAKER_01 26:39

Gotcha. Gotcha. You know, how's he gonna know if he's got some invasive fish he doesn't need? I mean, some of the small fish you might not even catch. I mean, it seems like to me that's that's in your backyard, let's all face it.

SPEAKER_06 26:51

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 26:52

Doing it right, you need to do this. I wouldn't have to do the shocking boat, shocking boat survey. So you know, is that you might have it might be loaded with crappie, you don't even know. Right. If you got them in there, you got a whole different set of problems, you know.

SPEAKER_08 27:03

Well, the other thing I want to like get in front of, Barry, is he's gonna catch a big old flathead catfish out of the river. And his boys are gonna say, let's take it.

SPEAKER_06 27:11

You're literally reading all my questions because he's gonna ask about putting flatheads in there.

SPEAKER_01 27:15

I know I know the answer to that one. Let's go ahead and take it. I've already asked him that question before. I did. I mean, you know.

SPEAKER_03 27:21

Okay, I see you've got a flathead out of the river. He's a big flathead. Okay. Do you notice how wide the mouth is? Oh, yeah. Okay. Well, let me give you an example of how this relates to your leg, okay? A largemouth bass can eat a bluegill about a third of its length. So if you've got a 12-inch largemouth, it can eat a bluegill between three and four inches.

SPEAKER_04 27:46

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 27:47

Flathead catfish can eat the size of bluegill you want to fillet and take home.

SPEAKER_06 27:52

That must be why they taste so good.

SPEAKER_03 27:55

So they're they're a very efficient predator, and their mouth is so wide, they can eat something really big. They just turn it thing sideways and suck it in. So you could have seven, eight-inch bluegill in there, and if you had a flathead in there, it could eat those up.

SPEAKER_01 28:11

This seven or eight inches itself. So they grow, uh, didn't I hear one time they grow like seven pounds in the first year or something like that?

SPEAKER_03 28:18

Some crazy amount. All that depends on the food supply. So, you know, that's that's food dependent, but they can grow at a very rapid rate.

SPEAKER_06 28:26

So don't dump any crappie from the river or any flatheads from the river.

SPEAKER_01 28:30

All your plants have just got a headset. He wasn't that diplomatic when I asked him about it. He said, under no circumstances. That's exactly right.

SPEAKER_08 28:42

Lenny, I had to tell you, hunting with you, you've got your phone in your pocket. You're constantly checking on it.

SPEAKER_06 28:48

Very valuable key features all in those things. It really is. From the compass mode to recent imagery, I mean, it really helps you understand where you are spatially, where you're headed, where Turkey is, where he was. It's a heck of a tool to use in the Springwoods. I didn't realize that they're updating these maps every couple of weeks. Yeah, I'd have never known about that clear cut that you were hunting. If I didn't have that recent imagery. Well, you know, and you could share some waypoints with me. I could share some points with you. You're exactly right.

SPEAKER_08 29:14

I mean, it has that capability.

SPEAKER_06 29:16

It does have that sharing capability, which is great. You know, you're wanting to show me where your goblin teaches are.

SPEAKER_08 29:22

Oh, man. You know, Onyx, it's a great app.

SPEAKER_06 29:25

It's a great app.

SPEAKER_08 29:26

So guys can go to onyxmaps.com backslash hunt and use code MOLSYOA to get 20% off.

SPEAKER_06 29:34

There you go.

SPEAKER_08 29:34

I'm a big fan of Onyx.

SPEAKER_06 29:35

I am too. I remember a lot of people had catfish ponds when I was growing up. Is anybody doing that anymore?

SPEAKER_03 29:44

They are, and they're and there's still some room for catfish in there. My my suggestion is always this. If you if you've got a small pond, like less than an acre, and you want a place for your kids to fish, or even yourself, where you like to catch some catfish, maybe have a catfish fry. 100%. That's what I payment. So don't put them in your 10-acre lake. Okay. And the reason is this, okay, is that when you if you stock them from somebody who's got some fingerlands, six, eight, ten inches, you put them in there. The first year they're gonna grow really nice, and so they're gonna be the perfect size that you want to catch and eat.

SPEAKER_04 30:22

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 30:22

But then after you had a fish fry or two, then you you that kind of takes you kind of forget about that. And then the next thing you know, those catfish are instead of being a pound or a pound and a half, uh, have grown to three or four pounds. And then next thing you know, they've grown to five or six or six or eight pounds. And the larger they get, the more difficult they are to catch. And once they get above about um two pounds, they begin to compete with your largemouth for food.

SPEAKER_06 30:52

Gotcha.

SPEAKER_03 30:52

Okay. Even if you're feeding, they're they're pice bores. And uh, once they get to that size that they can eat your bluegill, whatever s else you've got in there that your bass are gonna eat, then they begin to affect the growth of your bass. And so you end up with a lake that you throw out a little feed and you see a dozen of these big catfish that are eight to ten pounds that come up, they're on their channels. That's what they normally stock in there. And uh the next thing you know, you catch one, maybe two, then they quit biting. That's all you catch. You come back next week, see the same thing. But they become more and more difficult to catch, and they stay in there and they continue to deplete that food supply you have for your past. So that's one of the reasons I don't recommend stocking anything in in lakes any bigger than a than an acre. Gotcha.

SPEAKER_06 31:44

And if you got an acre just dedicated all the way to catfish, primarily catfish. Gotcha, makes sense. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 31:50

You could could you do a bigger lake with catfish, but only if you're dedicated to the catfish, or do you think it's just gonna be too much? You could. You could just don't expect anything from the grow other fish.

SPEAKER_03 32:01

Yeah, well, actually, you could do just a catfish lake if you were to. You know, and that and that's one of the things that you can do.

SPEAKER_08 32:09

But now you'd have to feed those fish. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 32:11

You can put some forage in there for them, but uh you probably wouldn't need any bass in there. But what a lot of people don't realize is if you get a catfish only lake, you get a depression or a piece of a log or a stump or an old tire, those catfish will spawn in there. And then what's gonna eat those little fingers?

SPEAKER_06 32:30

Nothing.

SPEAKER_03 32:31

Nothing. You're right, Toxie.

SPEAKER_06 32:33

Overpopulated again.

SPEAKER_03 32:34

Yeah, so then you end up with a bunch of little catfish. So it's it's hard it's hard to get things to work out right, you know, if you've got a larger lake.

SPEAKER_08 32:44

So So let's do this. Uh, because I want to get you to tell one of the things that I've always that's always fascinating uh me about Barry is he may not have invented fish pond fertilizer, but he perfected it.

SPEAKER_07 32:56

Yes.

SPEAKER_08 32:57

And but can you kind of carry us back to the day when you when that this whole process started with you and Don? And and and let's talk about how important it is to fertilize a pond, but then kind of go how you guys got into these really fine ingredients and these specialized micronutrient packages that you developed. And let's just kind of go there because that's so important to the health of a pond.

SPEAKER_03 33:19

Well, it is, and then and there have been studies on just fertilizing ponds, okay, since the 1950s, okay.

unknown 33:25

Dr.

SPEAKER_03 33:26

Homer Schwingle at Auburn was one of the pioneers in this in this thing. And so he had a bunch of small ponds that were replicates, and and he was really an agronomist. So he was really into replicating stuff so that he could verify what was going on. So one of the things that he discovered was that if you fertilize a pond, you can triple the production of fish in that pond by adding fertilizer to it. That's a big number.

SPEAKER_01 33:55

That's a huge number. That's a big number. Man, 50% is a huge number. Tripling now. Much less triple.

SPEAKER_03 34:02

Yeah, but tripling, and this is all documented. I mean, his data to to prove this stuff. And what this fertilizer does, it just starts at the basic level, okay, of food production, which is really bacteria and insects. Okay. And these feed off of uh plankton, phytoplankton. So as you increase the amount of food for those, then you increase the amount of plankton, the amount of insects you produce, and then this goes right on up the chain there from the basic uh production of bluegill to the production of bass. Because the more bluegill you have and and the bigger sizes you've got for the bass that you have in there, then the more you can produce. So it's just a pretty simple thing. So we so we were around this for a long time, and most of the most of the original uh fertilizer stuff was done with granular fertilizer.

SPEAKER_05 35:04

Yeah. I remember my dad going around with a coffee can and uh super triple phosphate.

SPEAKER_06 35:10

That's right.

SPEAKER_05 35:10

Flinging it out. Flinging it out. Okay.

SPEAKER_06 35:12

People had these like baskets and they would put up platforms. Yeah.

SPEAKER_08 35:15

And you'd cut a bag open and let a bag.

SPEAKER_03 35:17

That's more advanced.

SPEAKER_06 35:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_08 35:19

That's right.

SPEAKER_03 35:21

It is more advanced. So what happens a lot of times if you regardless of whether you're using uh 2025 or whether you're using triple superphosphate in some older ponds, that works really well. But the way not to apply that is to go around with a coffee can.

SPEAKER_05 35:39

I bet what 95% of it ends up sticking in the mud on the bottom.

SPEAKER_03 35:44

Well, it does. It doesn't dissolve in there or it becomes bound in the bottom muds, okay? So if you if you put it on a platform, or in the case of triple superphosphate, you don't even need a platform. You can take the bag, okay, and cut the whole top side of it out and slip it into the water that's going to be about 12 inches deep, preferably putting it on a point that gets a lot of wave action, it dissolves out of that bag. You know, and so the guy calls in, he says, Hey, I did what you told me to, and I cut that sack and I put it in there. And then, well, I went back and looked at it. Well, there's stuff in the bottom. I'm not using all, I'm paying for something, and they it's not getting in the water.

SPEAKER_05 36:26

Right.

SPEAKER_03 36:26

I said, No, what you're paying for is a filler that goes into that. You're not paying for any nutrients. Right. See? And so in in his mind, he thought that he was that some of his ingredients weren't really dissolving in there. So then we we went from there and then uh swingle developed a technique of suspending that stuff on a platform. Maybe putting that platform 12 to 18 inches deep, let the wind and wave action dissolve it. And and that's a good way to put that out. And the fertilizer they decided on back then was like 2025, okay? It's a good clover fertilizer. So you can use that in your pond. And uh so that's one of the when when we got into this thing, we started looking at better ways to put this out so that we didn't have to carry a 50-pound sack of fertilizer out there. And you got a 10-acre pond, you you know, you want to use a sack of that per acre in there. Well, shoot, that's a lot of weight to carry around. Yeah. And so you get some little guy like me that doesn't like the lift all that much. You know, we like to look at something else. And so we started looking into other types of fertilizers, and and we found some stuff that was uh was completely water soluble, and that you could really increase the proportions of the the parts of the fertilizer you wanted to use and incorporate into that water soluble stuff. And so now we've we've got something like uh Perfect Pond Plus. And that stuff, you know, you can put out five to seven pounds per acre. Beats the heck out of putting a 50-pound bag in. Right. So and you can pour this out because it dissolves in the upper two feet of the water column. And so you can take it and do like your granddad did. You can put it in a coffee can, or you can just pour it out of the edge, you know, from the boat and just go back and forth and back and forth across that pond, and it dissolves in the upper two feet of the water column, and then the wind moves this dissolved fertilizer all around the pond. So it's a much better way to put things out. And so as Don and I started looking at this and decided what else we could do to improve this? Well, one of the things that we thought about was uh incorporating some micronutrients in there. You know, and they they use this in in different types of horticulture, different nutrients and micronutrients that that have seem to be very important in the growth of a lot of plants. So we figured, well, growth of plankton is a plant. Let's see if we can incorporate some of this in there. And so that's some of the things we did. And as we developed this fertilizer, we wanted to we wanted to talk to people who were experts in fertilizers and see what type of ingredients we needed to combine in there that were dissolvable. And so there are a lot of companies that make this stuff, but we have the most dissolvable ingredients in perfect pond that that there is out there.

SPEAKER_05 39:26

Yeah, a lot of those micros are usually unavailable. Um and I'm not sure in in, you know, when you're dealing with soils, um, they they refer to it as chelated to make them more available. I don't know if that's what's used uh in the in the perfect pond plus, though, but uh it's in an available form. It's in an available form.

SPEAKER_03 39:47

That's correct. That's correct. And the ingredients that go into that stuff or are the most dissolvable that you can get. Now they're more expensive. Okay, and that's why most people don't put them in there because they want to do the cheapest thing.

SPEAKER_01 39:59

So it's an amazing product. Honestly, we have so many biologic products over the years. It's it's it really may be our very best product that we sell, no doubt about it.

SPEAKER_08 40:08

Yeah, we never get a complaint about it. No, it's a great product. And once a guy tries it, he won't go away. So tell a guy how he can look at his water and tell if he needs to fertilize. Which Seeky disc, is that correct?

SPEAKER_03 40:22

I mean, and I guess clear water is not a good thing. No, and a lot of people don't realize that because they want. Well, my my wife wants to swim here. Yeah. I said, well, get her a membership.

SPEAKER_01 40:38

Well you got do you want to grow big bass or do you want to go swimming? You can still swim in fertile water. You can't you don't won't be able to see your toes anyway. That's right.

SPEAKER_03 40:47

That's right.

SPEAKER_08 40:48

But it's got to be green. It we want it to be green.

SPEAKER_03 40:50

We want it, we want it to be green. But on the other hand, you can get too green. So what what you need to do is to is to try to check the visibility in there. You can't just go look at it. Oh, what do you think, Clyde? Is this greener than it was when we got it? I can see three foot in there. Well, that's what I always do. That's exactly what I was gonna do.

SPEAKER_01 41:10

Hey, sticks your foot in it.

SPEAKER_05 41:11

It's kind of like the glove glove with herbicides.

SPEAKER_01 41:14

Yeah, but everybody doesn't everybody can't buy one of those rings, Bobby. So I mean, I think there's a there's a simple way to check. Simple way to do that.

SPEAKER_03 41:22

One the one simple way is to you can you can get a yardstick, okay? That's measured in inches and millimeters if you're into that. But put you a piece of white plastic on the end of it, just with a tack. Stick it down in the water and see how far you can push it down until it disappears. Okay. What you're really you're looking for ideally is something that's gonna be between 20 and 24 inches. The hotter it gets in the summer, the more I like to see it extended so that you don't get developed something that's gonna be 14 or 15 inches. Okay. That's when you're looking for trouble in the middle of the summer when it gets hot and you get these thunderstorms coming in. And so you don't want your pond to turn over, but you you don't want to have an have a deprivation of oxygen. Do it like that. If you read some of the old literature developed in the 1950s, and listen, uh I work I work for the state of Alabama and and that was our Bible, okay. So it's uh 18 to 18 inches. That's that's too thick. Okay. So let let that thin out a little bit in the summer. It's okay to have it in the springtime, get a good heavy bloom on it. That's good. That's when a lot of your fish are hatching out, they need all that plankton. But as you go into the summer, let it let it clear up to about 24 inches. And I like to do that before I even fertilize. Okay. So let it clear to that depth before you begin to fertilize. If your lake is uh is got uh good alkalinity in it, and it blooms off real easy when you get into the summer, just use a half ration and see what happens. Once it clears to 24, fertilize it again. If you think you can get by with a full level of fertilization, then uh you can you can do that. But it's better to be safe than sorry most of the time.

SPEAKER_06 43:18

So So, how often should should we do this?

SPEAKER_03 43:21

You do you don't do it monthly, okay? You don't put it on a schedule where you go in every three weeks. Hey, it's time to fertilize. Put some more out. That's right, put some more. I don't care if you just put some more. That's what the book says. Yeah. So just go in there and check your visibility and fertilize by visibility. That's the that's the proper way to do it.

SPEAKER_06 43:40

So if you can see it twenty four inches down, add some fertilizer.

SPEAKER_03 43:43

Right.

SPEAKER_05 43:44

Uh and when do you normally begin fertilization in the spring?

SPEAKER_03 43:47

It like at a certain temperature or well if you if you read the books that were published in nineteen fifty two, okay. It says uh you start in February. Okay. That's wrong. The reason they wanted to start in February is because they had they had all kinds of algae and weed problems. And so if they could develop a bloom on there that shaded out the sunlight from the bottom, then that deterred the development of algae and other types of of uh types of vegetation. So but in my opinion, uh for what that's worth, I'd I like to wait till April. And the reason is because uh the water temperature is warmed up enough that you get a good response to your fertilization at that period of time. So I think you're wasting a lot of the earlier applications if you start in February. You get February, March, you know. You try to go skinny dipping that time of the year, buddy. Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 44:46

Yeah, what's the what what about, you know, we've got such a warmer spring right now than we've had. We did have a colder night for one night, but pretty much looking at 75 degree days or so for a week straight coming up. What what water temperature do you want to see just approximately?

SPEAKER_03 45:01

I'd like to see in the mid-sixties. Okay. That's what I'm looking for. Okay. So right now your water temperatures are running in the high 50s. Okay. Just a little bit early. I wouldn't hurt to put out now, but I'd just like to wait till about mid-April to put to start fertilizer.

SPEAKER_08 45:16

Who is this Clyde guy? He keeps talking about it. Sounds like you guys.

SPEAKER_06 45:20

I'm probably kin to it.

SPEAKER_01 45:21

I think you must have had a bully when he was in school named Clyde or something.

SPEAKER_08 45:24

So uh so Barry, help explain this, because this is one thing that kind of when we were started learning about fertilizer, some of the older ponds, Lanny, yours may fit this. Yes, it's old. Drains off the top.

SPEAKER_03 45:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_08 45:37

And if you get a bloom going and you get a big rain, you can lose your bloom.

SPEAKER_04 45:40

You can.

SPEAKER_08 45:41

And then but some of the more modern, newer ponds drain off the bottom.

SPEAKER_03 45:45

And it don't affect that as much. It does not. And and they you can do this on any established pond. Okay, it doesn't matter if it's old, like you've got, Lanny. So it was built, but maybe it was built in the 50s or 60s. Uh, you can come in and do a siphon system in there, okay? And and what that is, is that's a pipe. You don't have to break the dam to put it in. You you just go, the pipe lays right underneath the surface of the dam. Okay. So you put deep enough that you can drive over it with your truck or tractor. But the but the front end of that siphon that goes down into the lake goes down toward the bottom. You just run run that pipe straight down down the dam until you get into some really deep water. And then the backside of siphon, it works just like a regular siphon does. You know, the backside needs to be a third the length of the front. And you you're pulling off the bottom of that stuff, so when the water rises up, it goes out this automatic siphon system and sucks that water off the bottom. That way, that's below where your plankton is. And so it sucks the bad water really off the bottom of your pond and allows that plankton to stay in the upper three or four feet of water.

SPEAKER_06 46:57

Nice. I got some work to do.

SPEAKER_03 46:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_08 47:00

That sounds like the the best scenario for a guy trying to really match it.

SPEAKER_03 47:04

It's the best. You know, in the in the old days, back when we started with these uh with these stand-up pipes, you know, they had a drain valve on it. Uh most of those that were put in back in the 50s or 60s have rotted out because they used a corrugated pipe. Oh, yeah. You know, they thought it would last for 20 years. Now all of them guys have designed us going to be retired by then, so it was no big deal. But you know, using a PVC pipe or stand pipe, they they started uh with a uh a pipe that went over that upright, okay, and it was elevated uh three or four inches or six inches above the surface of the water. And so it kept logs and stuff from putting getting over your stand pipe and stopping that. And then that sleeve that went over there, s because it was above the the water level, sucked water from the bottom of that sleeve. See, so it depends on how deep your sleeve was, if it was six feet, it sucked it out from six feet below the surface. And so that was a pretty good deal back in the day. But today, the way to go is a siphon system. It's an automatic system, works perfectly. When if the pond comes up, it siphons. When the pond goes down, there's a little air air break on that thing, and as soon as he breaks the surface of the water, the siphon quits. So it it works, it works flawlessly most of the time.

SPEAKER_07 48:29

Mac, you got a question? I do. So when when I think about fertilizing, uh I immediately go to food plots and we preach soul test.

SPEAKER_03 48:40

Sure.

SPEAKER_07 48:40

So is there a similar process with ponds or is or you just kind of fertilize then the same?

SPEAKER_03 48:49

No, no, there is a similar process. And one of the things that happens here is the same thing happens in your food food plot. Okay. If you're if the pH of your water is too acidic, that prevents your plants from taking up the fertilizer you put out in your food plot. Everybody knows that, you know, you f you lime those things. Well, the same thing happens to your pond. If your pond is has got acidic soils, especially bottom soils in there, then the way to make your fertilizer more efficient is to neutralize that acidity in the bottom of your lake. And uh and there are a couple of ways to do that, but one of the primary ones that we use is uh use a lime and barge, and we use you know natural ground lime and put that out and cover the whole lake, the whole bottom of the lake. And that neutralizes the acidity of the bottom, and that makes your water quality more suitable to grow plankton when you apply fertilizer.

SPEAKER_01 49:50

I will say and interject what he says that if you're thinking about and you're building a pond, and there's a lot of people out there building ponds these days, save yourself a lot of time and trouble and money. Do a soil test when it's dry before you let the water in. And line I've seen y'all do it for people a bunch of times. Line that thing with the alignment needs, plus um before you ever put it, it's so much easier. Actually, probably a little more accurate in maintaining it in the history of the pond. You you may have to come back depending on the soil and how much decays and all in the future, but you're way out of the game to do it before it fills up with water.

SPEAKER_03 50:29

That's exactly what we did with your uncle's pond when we re-renovated that. And as that pond was dry, we were adding structure and stuff to it. I said, look, take your equipment and and build you a road inside the pond that you can drive a lime truck over and get that all the way around the edge of the pond and make sure you can cover the whole thing. Well, they they just got some bulk lime delivered, just like they would put in there.

SPEAKER_01 50:53

They're not they're not five miles from the lime plant, so that that worked out good for them.

SPEAKER_03 50:57

Yeah, and so that really works out well. So you can add that and you cannot add too much. So if your soil sample comes back like most of them do that I've ever sent in and says, Yeah, Mr. Smith, yeah, you you've plot here, you need a ton to the acre or two tons. Just go ahead and put five tons.

SPEAKER_01 51:22

You're better off. There's so much stuff's gonna decay in that pond. I mean, especially I think if you have a lake surrounded by trees and all those leaves and stuff in there which you have, you're gonna, it's gonna just gonna happen a lot faster. You're way ahead of the game to lime that thing to death. Exactly.

SPEAKER_02 51:41

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SPEAKER_08 52:43

What's the cutting edge technology in farm pond and pond management for sport fish, growing big bass? What's the latest?

SPEAKER_03 52:52

Well, the latest thing is it is a a little different from what you read in night in the booklet published in 1952. Imagine that. Imagine that.

SPEAKER_05 53:02

That they probably hadn't updated yet.

SPEAKER_03 53:03

Yeah. No, I mean it's still the same, but it was, but they just reprint. But the the things things have changed a little bit, okay? Things have changed since when you went fishing with your granddaddy, okay? Or your dad. All right. Back in those days, we were looking to catch whatever we would catch that were big enough to eat and take those home and clean them and cook them. Okay. Well, uh today things have changed, not just from that standpoint, but you know, uh my first wife wouldn't let me cook fish in the house. Of course, she's not around anymore.

SPEAKER_09 53:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 53:49

So what what what's different is that back in those days, it wasn't the objective to catch big bass. Okay, the objective was to provide food for these poor farmers who had a l a pond out there that they used to water their cattle with or just had a site that they built in there. They they weren't after big fish, they were after trying to trying to provide more protein for that family as a way of sustenance. Okay. So now, since nobody uh very few people get to cook fish in the house, uh what they're looking for is uh is something big enough to have fun catching and throwing back if they can. Catch and release. It's catch and release. So that's the big that's the big thing. So now what we've got is we're looking at ways to improve the food supply for these bass so that they grow faster and they grow larger. Okay? So back in the day, I can remember when you went to somebody's pond and one or two things, either either all the bass were like 10 or 12 inches, or everybody had caught all the bass out. And so there were hardly any bass in there. So now the thing is to try to keep that food supply coming and keep those bass growing at a very rapid rate. So we've looked at new things since 1952. Okay. We still like bluegill and bass because, as Toxie mentioned earlier, they they spawn every month during the summer. And and that's the best fish to put in to provide constant food for your bass population. But there's some new things that we've discovered back in in the last 20 years, and and that's threadfin shad. You look at any lake that produces big bass on a consistent basis, and I would say 90% of them have thread fin in there. Okay, thread fin are a filter feeder. Uh they feed off of the plankton population that's in your lake. If you if you fertilize your lake, it's ideal for threadfin. If your lake is really clear that you letting your wife swim in, you can see down to eight or ten feet, thread fin are not going to do well there because there's not enough food in there to keep that population going and keep them reproducing. So that's the that's one of the keys to that. And the other keys are uh the fact that we've looked at beyond food. We've looked at just the same thing that we've done in a lot of other species, and that's look at genetics. Genetics is very important. But the limiting factor in all production is food supply. Food supply first, genetics second. So that's that's that's how we've improved these things, and and we've we've managed these things now the way they wouldn't want you to manage back in the 50s and 60s, and that is we manage it so that the the whole bluegill population, the whole lake population, is almost crowded bluegill. We want lots and lots of bluegill in there. We don't necessarily want them to grow real big. You know, we we're not looking for one pound bluegill in lakes that we're planning on producing big bass. We want lots of little three to four-inch bluegill. So that's most of these bass can eat.

SPEAKER_07 57:07

Is is there any excuse me. Is there anything you can plant in a pond that is beneficial for the fishery?

SPEAKER_03 59:13

There are some things that you can plant, okay, uh that but they don't really benefit the fishery all that much. Okay, for instance, if if you were if you wanted to improve your shellcracker fishing, like we talked about before, there's could be some aquatic macrophytes you could plant in there. But the problem is trying to control those things so that they don't suck all the fertility out of your lake and and which which they're known to do. Uh that would improve the food supply for your shellcracker, but not necessarily for your bluegill. And there are other things that you can put in there that uh that might be good uh cover for small fish. There are things that you can water water willow, not common willows. American water willow. That's right, exactly. Very good. And uh those things will provide some some cover for the younger-the-year fish to get in. That's beneficial in a way. But we we're typically uh non-plant people.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:20

So so you gotta have cover though. I mean it is You gotta have cover.

SPEAKER_03 1:00:24

But you can put that in yourself with something that doesn't grow.

SPEAKER_08 1:00:27

So I'm gonna name four things real quick, and you just tell me what you think about them as a forage, uh fathead minnows.

SPEAKER_03 1:00:33

Fathead minnows are excellent forage for the first year.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:37

They're too slow, is the only problem. Okay. They wipe them out.

SPEAKER_03 1:00:41

So what happens typically is just like your uncle's lake that we just stock fatheads in today. I said, guys, you got a you got a lot of structure in here, you got some logs in here. Fathead minnows are different from a lot of other species because they they spawn upside down. Okay, people don't realize that. But they get on the underneath side of rocks and logs, and they have an adhesive egg and they deposit that up under there. I said, when when the end of April gets here, you go to your market, get you a couple of these uh waxed meat cartons that they put chicken and steaks in, bring those back, cut them apart, lay them flat, put them in your lake, they'll float till the end of the summer. If you want to know if your fat admins are spawning, go lift one of those boxes up that's floating and you'll see the eggs under the underneath side of them. Now, this is not necessarily for production of the fat heads because you've got plenty of structure in here for them to get up underneath, but you know, it'll be hard for you to see that. But this lets you know that your fatheads are spawning. But I said I'll tell you this in most situations, by the end of October, all your fatheads are gone. Well, what happened to them? Bass ate everyone up. That's exactly what it increases your bass growth the first year. If you got an established bass population and you're adding fathead minutes, you're just wasting your money. They're just eating them as soon as you throw them out.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:16

They're too slow.

SPEAKER_03 1:02:17

They're just a They're slow and and they're small and they don't spawn all that much. And the the other part is that they they're just um, you know, most people don't realize how many pounds of fish it takes to produce a pound of bass.

SPEAKER_04 1:02:31

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 1:02:32

I do, because I I ran and I ran a hatchery, you know. We had we had a thousand pounds of broodfish.

SPEAKER_04 1:02:39

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 1:02:40

Males and females and northerns, and it's floorless. Okay, so we had to we had to feed those things all year to keep them in good enough shape. So when the spring came that they had produced a lot of eggs and were good producers. It takes at least eight pounds of bluegill to produce one pound of bass. So if you yeah.

SPEAKER_05 1:03:02

That's a lot of little bluegill.

SPEAKER_03 1:03:03

It's a lot of little bluegill. So if you feed whatever you feed them, if you were to feed them shiners or whatever, so you pay five dollars a pound for shiners, that's a bargain. Okay. Multiply that times eight.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:03:16

You got $40 in a bass that weighs one pound. What do you think you can sell that for? Not quite 40. Maybe volume makes more money. I'm not sure. I'm not a good businessman.

SPEAKER_05 1:03:30

You know, I I may not be like everybody else, but I'm not, you know, the bass thing is not really my thing. One, that it's not my favorite fish to eat. I I prefer brim and crappie and stuff like that. So are there any tips? Like, I mean, I I'd rather be hunting than catching a bass and throwing it back. That's what I mean. But um blasphemy. Yeah, go ahead. So what are some things you can do to improve your panfish on in at your pond?

SPEAKER_03 1:04:00

Right. There are two things you can do. Okay. Most important thing is to fertilize. Okay. The second most important thing in panfish is a feeder. Okay. Okay. Use a good quality feed. Don't go buy this adult catfish stuff to put out there 30, 28%, 30% protein. They make some good feed out there now that has a higher protein content. The bluegill like it and they grow very fast on it. So if I had a pond, I wanted to brace a big bluegill in, that'd be one, that would be one of the things, one of the two things that I would recommend.

SPEAKER_08 1:04:37

So let's pretend like Dudley didn't ask that question. So if I ask you about fat heads, what about crawfish, stocking crawfish in a pond in a bass pond?

SPEAKER_03 1:04:47

Well, as you know, bass love crawfish. And you can buy this stuff by the sack, you know. You can put hundreds of pounds in there. But if you take a crawfish out and you and you take a bluegill and you hold them side by side in your hands, okay. The crawfish has about sixty to eighty percent chitin. Okay. That's an indigestible material that the bass gets nothing from when he eats that crawfish. Okay. Compared to a bluegill, which is a nice uh which is a nice succulent little meal for a bass. So I think I think you're better off to take the money that you would have used for crawfish and turn around and buy intermediate bluegill and put in your pond if you pass need food. What about tilapia? I hear a lot of people. Tilapia works well. That's uh those things spawn quite often. And uh the the one added thing about tilapia is that uh that during the during the summer in the time that they're spawning, that the females are actually uh keep the fry inside their mouth. Wow. So they're they're they suck water in to feed the fry, but they keep those fry inside there so that they're not consumed by something like green sunfish or really big bluegill or something else that could eat those, you know, and and they're not available to small bass typically because they're guarded by that tilapia female. And uh and then in the in the fall, when the temperatures start dropping, these tilapia become slower than fat head menace. And so the bass are able to come in and uh fish that's probably four inches in size or maybe five or three to five, and catch those things really rapidly. And then they're able to put on a lot of weight. So that's one of the advantages of of having tilapia in your pond. Some states don't allow tilapia, so you need to check your regulations to make sure that it's illegal to put those in. But it's just like all of us that are sitting here, okay? If if you want to lose weight, don't eat you a bunch of hamburgers and go sit on the couch. Same thing applies to your fish. You know, you want to be you want the fish, the bass, the predator, to be as efficient as it can be in consuming a bait. Don't just put one bluegish or one tilapia out there for him to chase all around the lake to try to eat. Get a bunch of them and make sure he can uh capture those without without expending too much energy.

SPEAKER_01 1:11:16

Okay. That makes sense. Yeah. It seems to have been we've tried most of that. It seems, you know, without going back and and and shocking and actually physically surveying, it just seems like the threatfin chat have worked the best. We actually see survival over time with the right cover more than other stuff. You know, I mean the the brim is the king, but as far as incremental of that, it seems like to me at least, we've had the best luck with the three pin shad.

SPEAKER_03 1:11:46

Absolutely, I agree with that completely. And and if you put tilapia in there, they're gonna winter kill. So you have to stock them again to follow a deer. Yeah. If you stock shad in there in most clients, they're gonna last for at least five years before you have a before your pond ices over to the point that these things will die.

SPEAKER_08 1:12:07

So you make a good point. I remember having a we had a big guest one time that talked about managing some ponds and they had no structure in them. And those bass would like just swim loops at the time. And exercise it. But once they put structure out in the lake and then they just parked by that structure, they were able to start putting some weight on.

SPEAKER_03 1:12:27

That's true. And they're just sitting there waiting for something that they can eat to come by.

SPEAKER_01 1:12:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:12:32

Rather than cruising the whole lake. So, you know, structure is very important.

SPEAKER_01 1:12:36

Well, the other thing is you can't your bait fish can't survive if there's no structure. They're gonna wipe it out and then there's famine and sits, you know. Yeah. Famine sets in in the kingdom.

SPEAKER_08 1:12:46

So how so help our listeners understand. So some guys in Minnesota listening to this, they really don't need to be worried about fertilizing their pond. And can't where is that line kind of break? It seems like it's a southeastern thing, Texas over It's pretty much it's pretty much southeastern and East Texas.

SPEAKER_03 1:13:06

There are some places in Texas where fertilization is not effective, okay? Where they've got enough hardness in there and enough uh they grow enough plankton naturally in there that they don't need to need to do that. You know, so your guys up there in Minnesota, that typically is not an area that you would consider fertilizing your pond. And then they they can grow some pretty pretty good fish in in those areas because they have a lot of natural nutrients there in those lakes.

SPEAKER_05 1:13:35

Remember Bobby and I worked a trade show one time with a uh it was there was extension agents from all over the country. And we had set up our booth and had our fish pond fertilizer sitting out, and like the ones that weren't in the southeast, they saw this pond fertilizer and they were like, What are you doing? They didn't even know about it.

SPEAKER_03 1:13:56

That's right. Yeah, they're they're not aware of that. And then the other the other part, there's another segment out there, and a lot of these people are are in the Midwest and North area in there where where they don't want to add any nutrients to the Trevor Burrus, yeah, they don't want to add like phosphates to that.

SPEAKER_05 1:14:09

That's right. But that would be like more in a river system, not a closed system that's that's uh a pond. Aaron Powell Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:14:15

So anyway, there in in in a lot of our worlds here, it's it's certainly uh it's certainly advantageous to fertilize if you've got your water quality right, just like liming.

SPEAKER_06 1:14:28

Um what is that pH supposed to be seven?

SPEAKER_03 1:14:32

The pH varies. See, a lot of people look at that as an indicator of whether they need to lime or not. But actually that pH fluctuates during the day as a diurnal fluctuation. So you start out in the morning, your your pH is uh a little lower, and then as you develop through the day, if you've got any plankton in there at all, the pH rises. So if somebody says, oh, well, this is my pond and this is the pH, what do you think? I said, Well, I don't know what to tell you. What time of day did you take this sample? That's that's a big part of what's going on there. So total alkalinity is what we like to look at. Gotcha. And if that's low, typically, this this is an arbitrary threshold, but we usually use 20 parts per million. Okay. If it's below 20, it can benefit from lime in your lake. If it's above that, you don't need to worry about it. It's just like just like your uncle's lake down there, Toxie.

SPEAKER_09 1:15:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:15:28

Uh I took water samples on that, and theirs were 40 parts per million. Because they've got they've got some lime in that area then there. And uh and they don't need any lime in the in that pond, although they did add some to it.

SPEAKER_01 1:15:41

So I remember it's a long time ago when you had you're you were stocking one and you had the it's like a big test tube with a dropper. That's right. And he was dropping and dropping, and I was like, What's what what do we got here? What's it what's it gonna be like? And he was dropping, and he was dropping, and he kept looking at it and dropping, and then finally he just threw the whole thing of water out. He said, Don't worry about it, you're not gonna have a problem. That's right. So evidently it was really high.

SPEAKER_03 1:16:07

It was really high, and I I recall that. But a lot of times in a lot of the lakes that we look at, you know, you we take that same test tube full of water, we put some chemicals in there so that when we can we titrate that with a with an acid, and a lot of times you'll add one drop or two bingo. It turns color. And that indicates that your alkalinity is probably five to ten, really low. And so you that really benefits from adding some lime to that.

SPEAKER_06 1:16:37

I guarantee you I'm gonna have to put some lime in the city.

SPEAKER_05 1:16:39

Oh, you know, that's yeah, alkalinity versus pH is yeah, and it's it's hard to figure out in the brain. That's right.

SPEAKER_06 1:16:47

But it's 20 parts per million is the threshold you're looking at.

SPEAKER_03 1:16:51

That's right, alkalinity. And and you know, you and the opposite part of that is uh, you know, we look at some lakes that are then maybe over some coastal lakes, for instance, and you take the pH of that, uh well, my bluebill ain't spawning. So, well, what's uh what kind of water quality you got? I don't know. It looks pretty good to me. But you know, that's what it's like, 100%, because it does look pretty good to me. Right. So you run the pH on that and it ends up being four. Well, uh you're not gonna get much plankton production, and then you've got some other things that are affected by a low pH like that. For instance, bluegill reproduction and and bass reproduction. So, you know, so you so you you you test your pH and your alkalinity, but the pH is not the it's not the key factor.

SPEAKER_06 1:17:40

Could I just take like a pool test strip and stick her in there? You can you can. All right. You got one of those. I got some of those. That's close enough for government work. Yeah, all right, good.

SPEAKER_05 1:17:49

Yeah, I know uh alkalinity is important when you're growing crops like at our nursery. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. We uh we like to stay below a hundred.

SPEAKER_04 1:17:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_08 1:17:58

So quickly, can you kind of tell us a little bit about your thoughts on northern black bass and Florida bass? What you would recommend stocking or a hybrid of those, or what what what are your what do you'd love to see?

SPEAKER_03 1:18:11

Well, Northern bass were were native to most of Mississippi and Alabama. There was some influence down in South Alabama with a with some Florida genetics that came up, you know, out of North Florida, that area there. But but there have been a lot of studies done on these, I mean recently. Uh when I say recently, I mean in the last 20 years, okay. And so one of the things that that was discovered was that the uh the northern bass are much more aggressive than Florida bass. And so far they're much easier to catch. So one of the things that uh we did at the hatcher was to develop a fish that was a cross between a fast-growing Florida fish and a fast-growing northern. Okay. And the reason we got on to this thing, because when we first started, we grew all floras, because we wanted our clients to grow some big fish, you know, and have have maybe a 10 or 12 or 14 pounder or bigger in there. Clyde wanted a big fish. Clyde wanted that. So uh so we get a call, you know, one time down in South Alabama, and they said, Look, I think we need to restock this lake with some bass. I said, Well, what's the problem, Clyde? He said, Well, uh, we we can't catch any of them. I said, Well, are you sure they're not in there? Well, look, me and Leroy, we can't, we're as good as there is, okay? We ain't caught nothing. So I said, Well, I'll tell you what to do. Let's let's just let us bring our shocking boat down there, okay? And uh we'll put it in and see what you've got. Maybe you don't have any bass. I don't know. I've never fished there. So we bring the shocking boat down and put it in. Well, they got everybody who's a member was there. So they're all huddled around the bank and then the boats out there. I said, look, just don't get in the electrodes, you know, try not to pick up anything that's in front of the boat.

SPEAKER_01 1:20:14

Yeah, they they won't do it but once. That's right.

SPEAKER_03 1:20:16

So anyway, we get out there and start shocking. Well, we hadn't shocked five minutes. We turned the water white with fish that were about seven to ten and eleven pounds.

SPEAKER_06 1:20:27

Ain't as good as they thought they were.

SPEAKER_03 1:20:29

No, they weren't. And so it ended up as we looked at the records for this thing. This was stocked a number of years ago by the state at that particular time. All they stocked was Florida bass. So they were all Florida bass. So Don and I went back home, we said, Look, we uh well, we just we can't develop this kind of fishery for these people. We need to do something that's different. So we got to talking about it for a little bit, and I said, you know, back in the day, you know, my s you started with state, and I did too. We started a little program where we did Florida's and northerns and and we combined those two and had a hybrid between the two. And we looked at the growth on these things and and uh discovered that the hybrid actually was a faster growing fish than either of the parents were. So we started developing a program where where we were selecting what kind of brood fish we had and making these hybrids. And originally we called them F1s, you know. Well, everybody had F1s, so we had a we had a lake that we had stocked from the origin, and we had a bunch of people from bass over that we let them fish in there. And uh and we had Tom Mann come up. He said, Man, these things, these things are these are the toughest fish I've I've caught. Bass. He said, You don't need to call these F1s. These are like tigers. So Tom contributed to uh the fact that we call these fish tiger bass. Yeah, that's how they got its name. Wasn't because I was clever enough to think of it or Don either. Bless our hearts, but you know.

SPEAKER_05 1:22:15

Heterosis, hybrid vigor. There you go. So was was was it a boy northern and a female Florida or the opposite?

SPEAKER_03 1:22:25

It was that a boy northern and a female Florida.

SPEAKER_01 1:22:28

Interesting. And you found something different if you flipped that.

SPEAKER_03 1:22:33

Probably uh we didn't do much of that flipping because uh it worked. But so what we did worked, and that was uh we thought that was the best. We thought that would be the best thing to to have that good growth potential in it. And uh so they're they're still producing those at at uh American Sportfish now.

SPEAKER_08 1:22:51

So on average, how if a guy stocks the right fish, has the right feeder fish program, follows what you recommend, what kind of weight can he put on a bass every what can he expect a two-pound, two-year-old fish to weigh?

SPEAKER_03 1:23:04

Four pounds. We've seen these uh tiger bass grow from two inches to two pounds in six months.

SPEAKER_01 1:23:15

Wow. Yep. October. So when the lake that are placed down there, we all fish the smogle lake. Yeah, it's awesome. And we we did it the first time the actually the corn ranch destroyed it, we started over. And he we did his formula, and uh for a fact, I mean you stocked them in June. Right, and so they were actually would be you know a year old, maybe in April or May, maybe stocked them in June. So anyway, I remember uh on a one of Neil's friends called and we weighed it, and it was just an ounce under nine pounds, and that fish was not quite three years old. Wow. And I saw it from my eyes, and there's no other fish could have been in there. We drained and started over. So that's what could I know that's probably a little extraordinary, but I know you've seen that before, too. It can happen. And the main thing I just tell everybody said, get, I mean, look, use him. If not, get there's some great people, you know, but go by what they tell you. Use that formula, like we've talked most of it today. And you can do that everywhere.

SPEAKER_03 1:24:23

You can. And it's it's amazing at how rapidly these things can can grow. So like I said, food supply is critical. So you've got to develop that to begin with, and that all goes back to your original stocking. Okay. The way you stock it and what proportion of bluegill to bass you put in. To give you an example, in 1950, you know, they stocked a thousand bluegill and a hundred bass. And so that's kind of been a standard for a number of years. Well, just uh that typically gets you into with not much harvest, gets you into a crowded bass situation where your bass quit growing after about two years. The growth slows down. But uh, if you stock it uh another way, the way we do, the way we did toxies, then your bass bass growth increases each year. And it's not uncommon. It's it's a pretty common thing to to get experience two years, two pounds per year growth out of these bass.

SPEAKER_08 1:25:26

Lanny. I'm thinking in about three years, I want to come over there.

SPEAKER_01 1:25:32

I can promise you, he just got we just our biggest farm we own. We completed what happened to us was though the the nutria destroyed that day. The levee. Destroyed it. Swiss cheesed, 500 yards of levy. Wow. Just destroyed it, and there was no answer, but you know, and these are the dirt guys, but they know Greg Briggs and company. They know what they're doing. It's like you have, boss, you have no option but to start completely over. So they they could drain it, let it completely drop, dug it all the way out below there. And I, you know, the one thing the I talked about the uh the Oxibo type lake, the goddamn scuba is just brilliant. David Bryan's built most of our stuff, all of our stuff down there. And he put, and I'd forgotten about it till Greg reminded me, he put bull panel all the way across the dam. Just maybe you can put like six inches of dirt over it, but he put it all the way across the dam of the one, the Oxebo lake that was near the river. Because he said, But look, you're gonna have they're gonna get eaten alive by beavers. It'll stop them. Watch. We've never had a problem with beavers or neutrals there. I did not do it on the other one, wasn't thinking, didn't know. But this time we did, we had a bunch of we had a bunch of hog wire stuff too, left over from something. And so we put wire all the way across. I think it'll stop them, but it's amazing had to start completely over. Point in saying that, Bobby, is he just got through putting his finishing touches on it uh last summer. And so you won't even have to wait three years. You can probably do it this summer. Oh wow. Catch up two and threes this summer.

SPEAKER_08 1:27:00

So I've got a I'm everybody's probably got some more questions, but I want to there's two things I want to make sure we we touch on. How bad of a problem are otters? I I seem like I've heard you whisper in my ear that if you're trying to grow a big bass, you need to make sure you're careful about those otters.

SPEAKER_03 1:27:15

Otters are really, really top-of-the-line predators, okay. Usually they they work together in a group. Okay, so they'll they'll come into a lake and they'll they'll herd these fish up just like a just like shepherd dogs on cattle. And they'll push them all up into an area, a pocket or someplace in there where they can catch these things. And believe me, uh, because I I had them at the hatchery there when we ran that thing, they'll they'll catch and kill the biggest bass you've got in there. They're they're really there's been some data generated on these things that that these things could eat if it was available to them, you know, more than 10 pounds of fish a day. So you get your six or eight otters in there that just came in from the river, they think they're in downtown in the smorgasbord. And they're gonna stay there until the fishing gets bad for them. That's a lot of pounds per day. It is, it is. Now that that's under ideal conditions, but still that's the potential these things have.

SPEAKER_08 1:28:20

So guys need to be aware of that and watch for the runs and stuff.

SPEAKER_03 1:28:23

And watch watch in the wintertime for runs on the backside of your dam and for and for scat. You know, you see some little piles of droppings there that all have scales in them. Bigger the scales, the bigger the fish.

SPEAKER_06 1:28:36

So Yeah, Mr. Barry, could you give us an idea of you know traditional stocking rates for bass versus brim on a pond?

SPEAKER_03 1:28:42

Yeah, back in the day when when they were developing this for primarily for protein, okay? A source of protein for farmers who had a who had a pond on their place to supplement what they could get off of their farm, then that rate was about a thousand bluegill finglings, followed by a hundred bass finglings. So the bluegill were stocked in in the winter and the bass were stocked in. That's per acre. That's per acre. Right. Nowadays, if we want to develop specialty fisheries, for instance, you got a lake and you want you that you want stocked and you want to develop a bass fishery in there. Okay. So we'll go and raise the rate of the bluegill by ten times. We want to change that stocking ratio from a ten to one to much uh increased. So we might come in and stock in uh two thousand or even five thousand bluegill per acre. And then follow that by depending on how fertile your lake is gonna be, by the maximum would be a hundred, but most of the time it would be fifty to seventy-five bass fragments per acre. And so that creates big, big food supply and has these bass growing off at a really, really fast rate. Rapid growth. Right. Makes sense. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:30:07

I can't remember. Did you put any thread, I mean threadfin shed? I know we always do fatheads with the broom.

SPEAKER_03 1:30:13

We did fathead with the broom, and then we followed that up with some threadfin shed. Okay. Yeah.

SPEAKER_08 1:30:19

Mac, you you had a question about something you've heard about all your life in Columbus. What was that?

SPEAKER_07 1:30:24

Yeah, so that there's a creek, Miss Barry, called the Luxapalala. And I've always heard that there's walleye in there, but I never hear about anybody catching walleye. Do you have any experience with that?

SPEAKER_03 1:30:36

Well, we do, because in in Alabama, for instance, we've got walleye that are native to the Coosa River system. They go all the way, all the way up and into Georgia, yeah, all the way down to Mobile. And so it's it's not unheard of to see and and uh run into a few people who are walleye fishermen. For instance, right there at Montgomery, Bobby, where you grew up, uh, the Tallapoosa had good walleye fishing in it. I mean, I I caught one out there that weighed eight pounds, eight and eight and a half pounds.

SPEAKER_01 1:31:10

Did you beat that skillet up? Yes, sir. I know.

SPEAKER_03 1:31:14

No, I turned him loose because I caught him in a gill net. Oops. Oops. In spite of what Bobby says, I'm not that great a fisherman. Uh anyway, but also uh I saw uh Danny Foster catch one that was eight pounds out of the Tallapoosa River. We were up there fishing for stripers, and he caught a big wallah. And so it wasn't unusual to have somebody who fished during the time of the year of typically February, you know, late January, February, depending on the weather was, to and on through the late spring to catch woolah in the Tallapoosa with a crawfish-colored crankbait. I mean, people with some of those deep holes, and I've caught a few myself, but none none eight pounds. Yeah. But it's it wasn't it's not unusual to catch a two to three pounder or maybe a four-pounder in there. And and these are distributed all the way down the river systems to mobile, but nobody knows how to fish for them, you know, and so you seldom ever have any caught. And the same thing, we we started putting walleye in some of our state-owned and managed public fishing lakes. And these were anywhere from 25 or 30 acres to 100 and something acres in size, and we stocked enough in there we could follow them with with our sampling techniques to know that they were growing and doing well. Hardly anybody ever caught one. So basically we looked at it from the standpoint of managing that lake that it was a waste of time and energy and money to put those in there because nobody nobody knew how to catch them.

SPEAKER_06 1:32:47

Yeah, but you might put some walleye in the lake. Yeah, I've been saying good to eat that. They're as good as there is. I mean for food.

SPEAKER_01 1:32:54

I'd let you teach me how to catch them if I could grow them.

SPEAKER_08 1:32:58

Barry, so when we you you're sitting here, you know so much, and every time you say something, I jot down another question I want to ask.

SPEAKER_04 1:33:05

That's right.

SPEAKER_08 1:33:06

But but what can you I want to make sure we cover the big things. We I see now, you know, our friend Jeff Fox where he's got these really neat bubbling look things at that that are bubbling up in his lake. Old Waverly, they've got some out there. Right. Can you talk about stratifying the water and what you're what's going on and why you need these kind of things?

SPEAKER_03 1:33:27

Yeah, those little bubbler things are called bottom diffusers. Okay, and they they operate because they Have something that's we've placed on the bottom that you can take compressed air from just a just a regular compressor, a one-horse compressor, and through tubing run through this little diffuser that sits on the bottom of that thing. And as these bubbles come up to the top, a couple of things happen. Okay. One is that if if it's not already saturated with oxygen, it can add atmospheric oxygen to the water, okay, which would increase the amount of oxygen you have in that water column. The other thing is that as these bubbles float to the surface, with them, they drag the water from the bottom up to the top. So that bubble curtain does two things. It it moves that water and keeps it from stratifying. And stratification means that it just layers, okay? Any of you guys remember learning how to swim in a farm pond? You know, you stripped off and it gets cold down there. That's right.

SPEAKER_01 1:34:32

Yeah, but we loved it.

SPEAKER_03 1:34:33

Yeah, so you you you go out in there and and suddenly you feel that cold water on the on on your lower leg or your foot. And so that's you have just penetrated the thermocline or where that pond stratifies. And that bottom layer in there that's cold over a period of time uh loses all of its oxygen. So you've got a pond out there that may be 10 or 12 feet deep, and if you've got any color on that pond during the summer, it it actually shades out the bottom, and all of your oxygen level is at the top from above the thermal congle. This bubbler keeps that keeps that water turning. So if you look at it like this, suppose you got a two or three-story apartment and you got a bunch of people that have moved in there to live, okay. In the summertime, in a pond like that that stratifies, it's just like moving everybody to the upper floor. So all your fish are crowded up there. So if you fish, um down here fishing this deep hole. Well, you just tight again. He's wasting your time. Sounds like Carl from Sling Blade. Because there's no there's no there are no fish down there. There's no oxygen for them to so when you destratify that thing and keep the water moving in there, it allows both your food, this includes your insects and things, to live on the bottom all the way to the top. And this spreads your fish out so they're not crowded either. So you get more food production and all your fish are healthier if you keep that water rolling in there and keep it turning so that it does not stratify.

SPEAKER_01 1:36:15

Isn't that a great insurance policy to keep it from flipping too?

SPEAKER_03 1:36:18

It is. It's a good insurance policy to keep it from flipping. But uh let me give you a little warning here, and I've seen this happen a lot of times. Yeah, old Clyde, he was going to de-stratify his own pond. So Yeah, me and old Leroy would have put this thing in here in July the 4th. Okay, well, the pond was already stratified. So what they did is they just mixed up all that dead water from the bottom with what was up top. They flipped it for themselves. They flipped it for themselves and they killed all kill all their fish in there. Don't want to do that. Don't do that. So if you're gonna start with these things, you need to start in the spring, okay, and then gradually start. Don't just turn it on full force, just gradually start moving that water around and let everything destratify and equalize.

SPEAKER_01 1:37:04

And so I guess when we ride by the catfish ponds and see them running those big paddles, they're doing the same thing, but even at a higher volume of movement than the phone.

SPEAKER_03 1:37:11

Yeah, very similar. But a lot, a lot of those ponds can de-stratify, but typically they're shallow enough that they're just adding oxygen to that. So to keep those things for catfish from dying from oxygen deprivation.

SPEAKER_07 1:37:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:37:23

So go ahead, Matt.

SPEAKER_07 1:37:24

All right, Mr. Berry, I got a question for you. So when we we're talking about the size of a pond in acres, right, but we're not talking about the depth of the pond. So I mean you can have a five-acre pond that's two feet deep, yeah, or a two-acre pond that's 20 feet deep. Right. So the water is obviously a lot greater in the deeper of the pond. So would that cause you to have to use more fertilizer based on the the the deepest parts of your pond? Your authorized size of your ponds way bigger the deeper it is. That's true.

SPEAKER_03 1:38:03

But most of your fertil you most of your fertility is in the upper layer of that water. Because it's only it only goes down as deep as you get sunlight penetration. Okay. So that that helps produce your plankton, which helps produce your food supply. So if that if the if the pond that's twenty feet deep is stratified, you got nothing on the bottom in there growing. I mean, there's no oxygen down there. So you don't have any plankton, you don't have any insects except anaerobic stuff, and and no other food or fish down there. So just as a kind of a happy medium, we we base our fertility on surface acres and on the visibility that we get off of that. So if if you got if you got a good bloom in there and your visibility is 20 to 24 inches, you're good to go.

SPEAKER_08 1:39:00

So let me let me kind of circle back here. This is one of the things I wanted to ask you. Many, many years ago, you helped us get our magazine, Farming for Wildlife, started that morphed into Game Keepers.

SPEAKER_09 1:39:11

Right.

SPEAKER_08 1:39:11

In the early days, you wrote several articles about all female bass ponds that you were experimenting with, and it just it sounded ripp really exciting. There's actually the Mossy Oak Golf Course. We stocked it. You guys stocked it that way. It and they've caught some big fish. What's the latest in that? Is is that would you say that's been a success, or are there challenges with that that y'all didn't anticipate?

SPEAKER_03 1:39:39

Well, there's some challenges with that. I mean, for instance, uh one of the first lakes that we stocked with all females that was uh of any size was about a 25-acre lake, and it was owned by a doctor, okay, in Montgomery. And uh it's not to say anything derogatory about doctors and fishing, but you know, he called in about I mean, we talked to him every year. We went out and sampled the fish, you know, every spring. We sampled them with electrofishing and recorded our data and and could see that these things were growing and everything was looking good out there. But he called in and said, Look, I uh I don't really like this thing. I said, Well, why not? Uh uh, you know, you s you you were there, you saw the fish that we got out there when we when we sampled it. He said, Yeah, but you know, I can't catch any of them. And I said, Well, um these are all these are these are F1s, you should be able to catch them. I don't understand. Well, I don't think there's enough of them in here. I said, I'll tell you what, let me uh let's go back and and take a look at that and see. So this was one of the drawbacks to having this all female lake, is that is that we were looking for developing really fast growing fish in some large trophy bass, which we did in that particular lake. And the problem was uh that he was not a really good fisherman. You know, he was kind of like Bobby's time.

SPEAKER_01 1:41:11

Thank you for saying that. Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:41:13

So anyway, he was he he was trying to go out and you know and and flip a plastic worm up on the bank and pull it off and whatever. And and and so his kids fished out there and then they they weren't any better than he was, of course, because he's the one that taught them how to fish. And so they couldn't catch, they couldn't catch very many of them. And so that was disappointing. And so we had to kind of work this thing a little bit where we maybe increased the stocking rate a little bit from what we stocked to his was like 30 or 35 per acre. And uh, and since these were females, they were already adults, and we had let this like go a year building up forest before we put any bass in there. So the so the the growth rate was really exceptional in there. And uh so we we came back every year and added a few, but what we really needed to do was maybe tailor this to the individual because everybody's not a trophy bass fisherman. Now I took a buddy of mine over there who was a really good fisherman, he was a tournament fisherman, and he was a trophy bass fisherman. And so he's man, he thought he had died and gone to heaven. He and I fished together for like four hours and we caught 25 bass that were over six pounds. And you know, he thought he had died and gone to heaven, that was really good, but these guys were disappointed because we caught more fish than they had caught in a whole year.

SPEAKER_01 1:42:34

I think it's probably safe to say that that is uh still a strategy, but for the guy who wants to grow the single biggest fish, maybe not to go catch a lot all the time necessarily. Y'all were able to do it, but you probably the first of those techniques that fish had seen when y'all went there, too. So, you know, um I can see where it would be a drawback to the average recreational fisherman who loves to catch them. And look, you can still grow really big fish. But you know, if a guy like wants to, you know, ensure he catches a 15-pounder or some crazy number, he's looking for the single biggest fish he can grow. That's probably the best way to do it.

SPEAKER_03 1:43:13

That's the best way to do it for several reasons. And and it can actually be an advantage to some guy who's just likes to catch decent-sized fish. Okay, the big advantage to this is that all females have the potential to be trophies. Males typically top out at about four pounds. You'll see, I've seen some, but I've seen lots and lots of bass. I've seen some that are six and a half pounds that were males. That's the exception. So most of these things will top out at probably three to four pounds as a male. But so to grow that three to four pound fish eats just as much food, you know, to begin with, as does a female. The other advantage of this is that that you have if you've got an all-female lake, you have no reproduction. There's no obligation for you to continue to take fish out twenty pounds per acre or something out of your lake in order to keep the bass that are in there growing very rapidly. So that's the big advantage is you don't have to harvest. You can just catch them and throw them back if you want to. And then then everything's fine. But you you go into another type of lake, you know, like Dudley's, and you know, and you may be required, you may need to take some bass out. So then that puts a little extra pressure on you. You know, well, uh and typically what we see is, well, we didn't catch but about four or five, let's just turn them loose. You know, and then and then you keep building up all these all these small bass, and then the next thing you know, you're you're really a run out of food. It's it's kind of like uh, you know, you can only have so many cattle on the pasture.

SPEAKER_01 1:44:57

Well, no, you're you're probably more likely to catch the same fish again or catch a or fish to a fish, present a lure to a fish that's been caught before and all that, because you know, you've got less. If you fish it, seems like you'd probably be conscious not to fish it too hard, which actually leads me to a question I was thinking about, Bobby, that's I think a lot of people I'd love to know. Just a general opinion. I know it's not perfect science, but we've talked to Kevin Van Dam and Hank Parker and Bill Dance and you know some of our Mossy Oak fishing people about you know fishing pressure and when you catch a fish, how does it affect it? How long would you wait for you to catch that fish again? Or like if you had a bunch of people coming to fish for a weekend, did you need to leave it alone for a while? Or did it even matter? What's your opinion on the fishing pressure and um how it affects fishing?

SPEAKER_03 1:45:48

I think it matters, okay? And I I've seen this in a number of situations. So if you go out and you put a lot of pressure on these fish and you catch some and you throw them all back, you know, that that some of those fish will will hit again right away. But after a while, some of them get to where they don't want to hit and they don't want to feed because they they've just learned that that's not the thing to do. So fishing pressure can be handled in in a number of different ways, but if you if you harvest the proper size out of there, that helps a little bit. Okay? But then if you if you Some of these lakes that we've managed actually had had uh clients that wanted us to come in and harvest them with electrofishing. So that we could take out the numbers that needed to take out.

SPEAKER_01 1:46:36

Without making them look.

SPEAKER_03 1:46:37

Without without you know, without stretching their lips too much so they don't want to want to buy it again. But yeah, that's that's a that's a real it's it's a real problem. And for for these legs they have a lot of pressure in them.

SPEAKER_01 1:46:53

So I need to keep Bobby out of there more, is what you're saying. But Barry, you're not helping me out.

SPEAKER_08 1:46:58

You hurt me a minute ago. Now you're hurting me again.

SPEAKER_01 1:47:00

I knew, I knew, I knew we needed to put a collar on them.

SPEAKER_08 1:47:04

So look, we've been at this a while. We could I think we could sit here and we need to do this again. You've you've been very uh educational. I've learned a lot. I try to write down a couple of things that I learned every time, and I've I'm at six already, and that's more than I've ever written down on a podcast before.

SPEAKER_01 1:47:20

So I know you could count that, huh?

SPEAKER_08 1:47:22

Yeah. Really? Got on to another hand. So, Mac, why don't we we've got a trivia question prepared for you, Barry.

SPEAKER_02 1:47:28

Today's trivia is brought to you by Sheffield Financial. Explore swift, effortless, and convenient financing for power sports, outdoor power equipment, and trailers, fueling your pursuits in hunting, fishing, and gamekeeping. More details at Sheffieldfinancial.com.

SPEAKER_08 1:47:43

Yeah, we love Sheffield. They help us out a bunch. And so, Barry, the way this thing works is Mac we I'm just I'm probably taking Mac's spot here, but uh our listener has already won a prize. You're playing for a prize for you and for I'm gonna go ahead and say Carol could win one too. We'll send we'll send two podcast t-shirts home with you. Wow. So, Mac, why don't you take it from here?

SPEAKER_07 1:48:08

All right, Mr. Barry. So our podcast listener that left us a review is HZZH S B S H that left us a review. Thank you for the review. So you're gonna win two houndstooth turkey talk turkey calls, and we'll send them to you. You know, what does that name mean? Does it mean anything, Mike?

SPEAKER_08 1:48:28

Is that code for something? Not that I know of. Okay, I was hoping it wasn't. I figured you were hoping it was.

SPEAKER_07 1:48:34

All right, Mr. Barry. So the question for you is how many species of black bass are in the state of Alabama, which I would assume are in this in the southeast?

SPEAKER_03 1:48:48

Okay, we've just got a new black bass that's named. Okay, so that adds another thing to it. We have a largemouth, we have the spotted bass, uh, we have the uh coosa bass, and over in East Alabama, there's also a shoal bass and a smallmouth, which is really restricted to the Tennessee River.

SPEAKER_08 1:49:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:49:12

I thought we might sneak that smallmouth one in there on it. Yeah, that that was silly. I mean, the people that publish that will call him to find out what the heck is the number. So that was not that wasn't too difficult.

SPEAKER_03 1:49:27

That's okay. Um hope I passed without Don here to give me some coaching. Yeah, so you get two podcast t-shirts to take back home. So cool.

SPEAKER_01 1:49:38

Well, yeah, that's worth a uh uh eight-hour drive. Yeah, you bet. For sure.

SPEAKER_08 1:49:44

So what what should we be asking you? What did what is there should be something else to say?

SPEAKER_01 1:49:49

That's a good question to ask that question. What are the most common mistakes?

SPEAKER_03 1:49:53

It is. Well, I think we've covered most of them. Uh you know, one thing is is uh people disregard the the actual impact that stocking has in a new lake. Okay. Now I'm gonna get a leader over to bring me some bass. You know. That can be important. But the secondly is that you can't control the numbers once they spawn. You know, I'm gonna tell Toxie I'm gonna stock 50 per acre in his new lake. So you put one pair of bass in there, you could end up with 500 per acre. And then they don't grow off.

unknown 1:50:51

That's right.

SPEAKER_03 1:50:51

These bass ain't growing well, they don't have enough to eat. You know, you got too many of them in there to begin with. So that's that's one of the first things. And then stocking any other fish on the river there's a big mistake. And so, you know, yeah, with whether you got somebody that wants to put some crop in there or whatever, or sometimes they'll just think they're helping you out.

SPEAKER_05 1:51:13

I see a lot of similarities, you know, in in food plotting and stuff like you know, establishing native grasses and wildflowers. Exactly. You gotta, I mean, you know, you you spend all this time and and money building a pond. Yeah. You know, do it right the first time. Yeah. Yeah. Adding the fish is is a much lesser expense than building a dam. It is.

SPEAKER_01 1:51:34

A complete parallel to deer, especially. And we've learned that you can't just have a place with deer and all of a sudden plant a bunch of great food plots and supplemental feed them. And boom, that summer they put on these great horns. I mean, if they're really going to express something exceptional, they have to be healthy and nutritionally taken care of from the time they're born. And you're telling us the same thing about fish. If you ever start out wrong, I mean, I still remember you saying too, I mean, this is other another piece of advice is when you do stock, if you can kind of catch some that first year, if you can kind of keep up with those first fish that you stocked and be sure they go back, because they got more at a young age than you'll ever get from the rest of them. And you're probably gonna catch your biggest fish by one of those growing up, simply because they had all that perfect nutrition as a child, so to speak, or fingerland. And you can't just throw a bunch of nutrition in the in a pond at a later date and do any good to speak of, not like that. So that's the parallel I see between that and deer. Very, very similar to growing a trophy. It starts when they're born.

SPEAKER_03 1:52:41

And actually, it's toxic. I owe you an apology.

SPEAKER_01 1:52:44

What's that? Uh-uh.

SPEAKER_03 1:52:45

Well, I didn't think you were paying attention to anything I told you back in the day.

SPEAKER_01 1:52:49

You know, but paying attention, I did. Adhering to it, the discipline sometimes I don't.

SPEAKER_08 1:52:55

Oh my goodness. I tell you what, I've enjoyed having Barry and Clyde here today. We get Clyde. Well, we're just glad to be here, too.

SPEAKER_01 1:53:06

I wonder if he does that and uses Bobby for the name when he's uh in another place.

SPEAKER_05 1:53:13

He probably calls our office and acts like Clyde.

SPEAKER_08 1:53:18

Barry, you got uh you got a son, you got some some grandchildren.

SPEAKER_01 1:53:22

Nothing like it.

SPEAKER_08 1:53:23

Yeah, boy, they you know what uh great uh grandfather they've got to to take them fishing and hunting and all that.

SPEAKER_03 1:53:32

That's true, but don't get me started on that because you know we don't have time. All these kids nowadays. Well, we're playing well, we start baseball. Well, we just got through with basketball. Well, we got, you know. Soccer. Soccer. We got all these things. It's a lot more complicated than it was when I was growing up.

SPEAKER_01 1:53:52

Yeah, we just went fishing.

SPEAKER_08 1:53:53

Yeah. Yeah. Life's busy, Barry. But I tell you what, you I I've always been impressed with the way you t conduct your business and the way you handle yourself. You're just a you're a good guy. And we're the best.

SPEAKER_03 1:54:05

We're blessed to have known you. Well, I'm blessed to have known you guys too. So this is good. I appreciate it. I appreciate all the flattery for you know trying to get me to come back. Bobby.

SPEAKER_01 1:54:14

If Bobby's trying to get into one of your ponds, I know what he's doing. You ought to say work a guy over's got a really good turkey lace.

SPEAKER_08 1:54:22

Lord have mercy, Barry. You see what I have to put up with? I do, Bobby. Dudley, you got anything else we need to ask?

SPEAKER_05 1:54:29

I had one question, uh, and I'm sure folks ask you this. Um, what's like the smallest pond you would recommend for, you know, to get the full experience?

SPEAKER_03 1:54:39

That's a good question, Dudley. That is a good question, Dudley. And uh normally we look at it this way, okay. If if you've got something that's gonna be larger than a half acre, okay, you can support a bluegill and bass pond. If it's smaller than that, then I would probably steer you in another direction. Because it's hard enough to keep the balance going on in that pond between the number, the ratios of the bass and the bluegill, keeping everything healthy and reproducing and growing at a good rate. If you get smaller than a half acre, it's really difficult to do.

SPEAKER_08 1:55:13

Okay, good to know. Mac, you got anything else you want to ask? You're good. Rob, wake up over there. I tell you, this has been uh this has been really you know, we've we've we talked fish ponds occasionally, and um I I tell you, I just find it fascinating.

SPEAKER_01 1:55:30

Well, um we all love I love this topic. I love this topic. But I'll I'll say I I'm guessing Bobby loves this topic more than anybody at Monsieur Oak Biology. He absolutely adores fishing.

SPEAKER_08 1:55:44

Yeah. Well, and I tell you what, fishing with Barry is so educated. I've been blessed to go with him. And he's teach just like he is now, he's teaching the whole time that he's not fussing at you about something.

SPEAKER_01 1:55:55

So we probably need a little fussing.

SPEAKER_08 1:56:02

There we go. I get that a lot. I tell you one last thing. I got a good turkey story. Well, I do. Even better. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:56:14

Even better. I mean, this is the time of the year to think about all those things, but you you remember a guy that worked for the uh Department of Conservation, uh, Game and Fish, named Paul Maddox. I do, yes. Okay, well, Paul was regarded as probably one of the top turkey hunters in the whole division. Okay. And he worked for the director, Charles Kelly, worked directly under him. And so he did whatever Charles needed him to do, but during the turkey season, you couldn't you couldn't find him because he was in the woods every day. Just like Toxie. Okay. So but part of his job was to was to carry these people that that Charles, his boss, thought would be influential to help the department out. And so he he he harvested his limit every year. But then you could add another dozen or more on top of that for who he called in birds for other people. So when I first started turkey hunting, I was a young guy there into the department, and uh I I'd never been before that year, so I I went out and I harvested my first turkey. Okay. And uh I think that was one of those turkeys, as we all know, hunted enough that were just very suicidal in tendencies. Just came up by himself, really, and uh and uh and I harvested him. But I didn't have anybody, any mentor to tell you that a lot of people would talk to me, but I never had anybody to carry me hunting. So Paul one day he said, uh, look, uh boy, I'm gonna I'm gonna take you out myself, okay? And uh man, I was so excited. And and so he says, uh, I said, Well, what time do we have to get up? Oh, I'm not I'm not taking you in the morning now. I don't I'm not gonna do that, but I'll take you tomorrow. Uh just be ready to go about lunchtime. I said, Lunch? You can you call up a turkey at lunch? He said, Oh yeah, oh yeah, we can do that. So anyway, we met there at lunch, and it was a place down in uh Wilcox County had a lot of turkeys. You know, Pine Baron Creek kind of bordered part of property down there. And so anyway, we went and we kept walking, walking and walking, and finally we got to this place. It was this big, big, huge pine tree. He said, Yeah, I think it's far enough. So we s sat down there and he said, Now look, you you know I ain't got but one eye. I said, Yeah, I uh I understand. Well I got to sit on this side over here so I can see. I said, Okay. So uh anyway, we he said, Now, if if we hear a bird gobble, pretty good chances I'm gonna call him up, we'll kill him. I said, All right, so he started off, you know, a little three yelp soft thing, a little five yelp. Pretty soft. Nothing. Nothing. I thought this is exactly maybe this is like snipe hunting, I don't know. I mean, maybe he just lured me into this thing. And so So he you know, Paul used a he used a lohman box. All you old timers know what that is, toxic too. And he but he had him a little special cedar striker. Lowin box comes with a solid piece of cedar that you strike on that thing, but this was a box. So it was a box on a box, and so he man, he got on that thing. And I mean he started talking turkey with that thing, and it carried all the way down to Pine Level Creek. Well, sure enough, before he even finished that series. Oh, everyone gone way down in there, you know. He said, There he is. I said, Yeah, I heard him. He said, Well, we're just gonna wait here just a minute or two and then we're gonna call again. So he waited about it seemed to me like thirty minutes, but it probably was just five. And so he he got down on that box again, and before he finished that call, that turkey cobble. He said, He's coming. He's coming, he's a lot closer. He said, Now you get ready, get your gun up. He's gonna there's a little little not a creek, but it's a little wet weather thing down there. He's gonna come around the end of that thing, and he's come on, come on, come on to your side. That's why I put you over here. I said, Okay, I appreciate that, Paul. This is great, I'm so excited. So anyway, he's he starts calling. You could hear the bird coming, you know. He was getting closer and closer and closer, and then finally he gets up there and uh he said, Oh my god, he's gonna see us. I gotta shoot him. Boom! It's his last name. Paul. So anyway, he killed, he killed this thing. Well, um, I mean, I'm not I'm not the smartest guy around, but but in retrospect, I got to thinking about this thing, and I thought, you know, I was wondering why the base of that tree was all cleaned out. Not not a no leaves, no brush, no nothing around there. I said, you know, I bet that rascal has called from this same tree before. Then I got to think about it, I said, and I bet most of the birds he killed came on his side.

SPEAKER_01 2:01:16

Yeah, that sounded like a Bobby Stone.

SPEAKER_03 2:01:18

But anyway, that was my that was my I remember that experience, and just like all of you who've harvested turkeys and hunted turkeys hundreds of times. You know, you go out and you have wonderful experiences.

SPEAKER_06 2:01:29

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 2:01:30

And so, you know, you you you just can't remember all those, but I certainly remember that one.

SPEAKER_08 2:01:34

I remember working at the outhouse in Montgomery and Paul Maddox, man, you just brought in a turkey that had a beard that had a couple of hairs that went 16 inches. Oh, wow. Yeah, man. I think it may be like the longest beard in Alabama.

SPEAKER_05 2:01:48

May have been shot from the same pine tree.

SPEAKER_08 2:01:51

So I got I got one more for you.

SPEAKER_04 2:01:53

Okay.

SPEAKER_08 2:01:54

And be honest, what's the biggest bass you've had a customer grow? You don't have to say where it was, but what's the biggest bass you know one of your clients grew? 15 pounds, four ounces.

SPEAKER_06 2:02:07

Boy, that's a hog. That's a hog. Like a big old filet, wouldn't it, Dudley? Yeah, no, we'll talk about where this was afterwards, if you know.

SPEAKER_08 2:02:16

That's a big fish, Doug. Yeah, it's huge. All right, guys, it's been fun. Barry, thank you for coming. Yeah, we're gonna really close it out this time. Landon, you missed a lot. I know. We'll catch you up. Super intriguing. Basically, stay, keep those river fish in the river.

SPEAKER_06 2:02:31

I mean, I want I think I want a little bit of everything in there now. Voila, we're going all voila. Why don't you say goodbye, Dudley? Goodbye, Dudley. Get us out of here, Rob.

SPEAKER_00 2:02:43

Thanks for tuning in to this week's episode of the Game Keeper Podcast. And be sure to tune in again. Subscribe to Game Keeper Farming for Wildlife Magazine, and don't miss the Macio Properties Fistful of Dirt podcasts with my good buddy, Ronnie Guz Strickland.