I'm 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 Austria Land Enhancement Studios. 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 going to tell you, I bet it's interesting. Enjoy.
SPEAKER_04We're live. Three, two, one. All right, guys. I am so excited. Uh we're going to be talking fish and pond management. Bobby's happy place. That's right. It is. But what's really special, I'm looking across the couch. I'm going to go ahead and get him introduced early here. We've been trying to do this for months, but this guy fishes so much. He couldn't, he wasn't going to interrupt his carpenter. I'm going to the boundary board. He had all these training. Trying after my own heart. But we've got Mr. Les Ager who's from Hawkinsville, Georgia. And at one time, he was the he he is the man in Georgia when it comes to the.
SPEAKER_00What do you mean one time, man? Come on. Well, at this time. We apologize for Bobby.
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SPEAKER_02Les, thank you for being here. I appreciate it. I wouldn't miss it for nothing.
SPEAKER_04I'd say once the man, always the man. That's right. Well, I tell you how I got to know Mr. Les he's one of Barry Smith's, maybe his best friend. Barry talked about him so much.
SPEAKER_00That's one of our heroes right there, buddy.
SPEAKER_04And and and his fly fishing ability, his pond management ability, all this stuff. He Barry would just talk about him all the time. And then I met Les at Barry's uh the celebration of Barry's life. And so we started talking then about trying to get him over here.
SPEAKER_02Uh Barry was a real special individual, and everybody knows. And and uh uh he and I had sort of parallel careers, uh not going exactly in the same direction, but pretty close. We shared uh a lot of the same loves, uh hunting, fishing, particularly fly fishing. Uh made a lot of good trips together. Made a lot of good trips together.
SPEAKER_04So early in your career, you got started down the working with the state of Georgia and and in the fisheries department. Can you kind of tell us how all that got started, how you got started there?
SPEAKER_02Well, I uh I learned very early in my life that I was really interested in fish. That's really some of my earliest memories, is is trying to catch minnows out of the creek at our house. And and I was not very good at it, but it didn't deter me from enjoying it. And I tailored my education with that goal in mind. And and in the early 1970s, uh got a job with Georgia DNR. And uh I really just lucked into the probably the ideal job for me. It wasn't a Georgia wasn't a place that I gravitated to. I went there because there was a job. I'm originally from East Tennessee, and it's it's hard to get the mountains out of your blood when you've been up there for a while. But but Georgia adopted me and and I didn't realize when I showed up how great a state it was. It's got a tremendous amount of diversity from the mountains in North Georgia all the way to the coast and and fishing is is regardless of what kind of fishing you're talking about, fishing's really good in Georgia. Uh I retired from DNR in Georgia and oh about 15 years ago. And when I retired, I was uh I didn't really have a plan. I just sort of had momentum going in a certain direction and I just wrote it and and I ended up from a private standpoint essentially doing the same things after I retired that I did when I worked, except I was working for individual landowners and and uh we manage lakes for folks now. Probably got cover a hundred clients. And uh it's it's just it's a it's a it's a wonderful way to spend your retirement. Uh I've never I've never uh worked a day in my life. Every day has been a enjoyment.
SPEAKER_00Well, Cuz says that all the time.
SPEAKER_04You were telling us that Steve Harvey is you manage some if we can say that uh here, I don't think we it's not any kind of secret.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, there's no secret he loves to fish.
SPEAKER_02There are there are a lot of really good fishermen that that that you might think of as celebrities that live in the in the middle Georgia and Atlanta area that that that we deal with, and and uh uh Steve is a good example. He he's a he's a really enjoyable guy to be around, and he certainly loves fishing, he and his wife. And uh they're trying to to to foster that kind of uh relationship for a lot of inner city youth. They have that's aw they have a big uh camp every year where they'll bring several hundred uh boys in one camp, girls in another camp, and and uh introduce them to the outdoors, introduce them to fishing. It's a real positive event for them, and and they want to grow that on their farm there in Georgia and make it a bigger event as as time passes.
SPEAKER_03Pond fishing is like the universal donor.
SPEAKER_00I think it's probably how everybody's perfect for everyone, you know. Uh the the special, and there's even a documentary on the blue zones around the world where for centuries people have lived longer, and especially now because they call them centurions, don't they? Yeah, but they've got it's different zones, and there's even a spot or two in this country, but even outside here. But there's one of the things that was in common, all of them, is that people do not retire and quit working. They keep on working well into their upper ages. In fact, much more than other places, but it's always something that they love doing. And I thought to point that out, how appropriate with him, because I guarantee you you're you're you're not only doing what you love and making more money and doing all that, but you're probably increasing your link longevity doing it that way, I bet you.
SPEAKER_02I'm afraid my joints might not agree with you.
SPEAKER_00Well, you know, you can be busy with your job and not have to necessarily be physically busy with it either, you know, because if you got a hundred clients, you're directing a lot of you're gonna be a band orchestra as much as you are a tuba player, you know.
SPEAKER_02That's that's that's words to live by right there. You're right.
SPEAKER_00Trust me. Yeah, I'm not a great tuba player, but I can direct a little.
SPEAKER_04He's a maestro, is what he is down there.
SPEAKER_03Bobby at the moment. Bobby, do you think do you still think you're gonna be coming into the office at 7 a.m. and drinking coffee into your 80s and 90s? Well, I hope so.
SPEAKER_04I I really don't want to retire. I mean, I I really don't want to. I'm hoping I can stay around. I mean, that's my hope, but I was worried about thinking about it. Look, I have this hospital bill at if Mr. Bill.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, they're on a 30-year plan for those. So we were just going, I was gonna always judge Bobby when he got like completely grayed out, but he took it away from me by being bombed.
SPEAKER_04Oh, yeah, I certainly did.
SPEAKER_00Hey, look, let's get back to it.
SPEAKER_04Back to less. Well, I want to ask you we all probably saw, except for Toxie, he doesn't have social media, but we saw Steve Harvey come to tears meeting Bill Dance last week. I thought that was really and we had just had Bill Dance on here a few weeks ago. And uh I don't know, that really kind of was a really neat scene there to see that emotion.
SPEAKER_02Well, it it was, and and and it's because not unlike the guys here at this room, uh, he loves the sport. He enjoys it. Uh uh and has it has enjoyed it for a long, long time, but in a very different way than say some of us have. You know, we've had access to places to hunt and fish that that I'm sure early in his career he did not. Yeah. Uh, but that doesn't that doesn't deter his passion. That's what I'm saying. And I respect that. Yeah, for sure.
SPEAKER_03And uh, and of course, I mean, years of watching him on TV, uh both that goes both ways. But years of watching Bill Dance fishing, you almost feel like you become his good friend. Just because you see, you know. And that's that's probably how it worked with Steve. Uh-huh. You know, it's like he felt like they were good buddies just from watching his personality on TV over the years.
SPEAKER_00They're both great communicators for sure. I mean, Bill Dance is the communicator of the century in fishing.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, I would agree with that. So when you talk about managing a pond, it's so to me, I mean, you walk up to the edge of this lake and you look, you cannot see anything. You don't know what's going on. There's a lot of the way you there's a lot of trust in somebody taking your word for it. This is what you need to do, and this is going to be the results. But what we have learned that there is so much, if it's like a formula, if guys will follow what you exactly and others tell them.
SPEAKER_00I tell people all the time when they're talking about buying something. I was like, the first thing I would do, and I'm on this big hunting guy thing, and all this stuff, but I first thing I would do is hopefully you have a place you can do it, I would build a fish pond. That's the first thing I would do for enjoyment or your place, and I've said that forever. One, you can share with a lot of people where you can't necessarily do that, where deer, turkey, ducks, and all that stuff. You can have the kids, you know, Sunday school class out. In fact, it's making the lake better and stuff. And on top of that, if you will do what you said, if you will just get someone, a consultant, and somebody knows what you're doing, and follow their formula, you can almost more than anything in owning land, you can guarantee a great results if you do what they say.
SPEAKER_03Gosh, I mean, even before you if just say you're looking at buying land. Uh, if you see a place that you really like, but you know you want to put some water on it, you need a consultant to look at it before you even buy it to make sure it's an appropriate site. Yep.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, can you put a body of water on? Can we start there and talk about what you need to look for?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, we do that on a on a pretty regular basis. And it's a it's a real astute sportsman that that recognizes that he needs to evaluate it before he buys it. And doesn't I I really hate it for folks when they come to me with a piece of property or a lake that they've already built or that someone else built and they bought, and and they're they want a certain amount of characterization of it. They want they want it to be a certain way. And if if they if they had had come to me before they bought it, I could have saved them a lot of heartache because oftentimes uh uh every little body of water is different, and and you can't necessarily do what you want on that body of water. You gotta tailor your your your expectations to what you've got to work with. Uh well so what do y'all look for? Can you talk about runoff and and an ideal situation? Aaron Powell The Devil is in the details and it varies a lot depending on the the geology and the geography of the part of the country you live in. Soil types.
SPEAKER_00Big time.
SPEAKER_02Soils are a big part of it. Uh uh if if you're on the coastal plain, for example, almost all the ponds on the coastal plain would be what I'd call dug ponds. They're literally they're holes in the ground that that were built in a way that they hold water. Uh if you go to further upstate into the Piedmont area or the mountain area, uh, those kind of ponds are not really practical because of the differences in geology. And most of the ponds in those kinds of places are what you might call runoff ponds. They're they're dams up that are that are built across a water source that that impound the water that comes down the watershed. And those are probably the most common lakes for for you guys especially.
SPEAKER_00Well, we're in the Black Belt, and I mean I've always heard and I've found for me building that's the best, probably as good as there is. There's some great zones and places, but this dirt, and you know, from other standpoint, but especially from building a dam that lasts the ages, is as good as it gets. Yeah. Not to mention a higher pH typically, too, to start with, you know.
SPEAKER_02And and and some of those things you just can't replicate no matter how much money you have.
SPEAKER_05Gotcha.
SPEAKER_04Is it it are there challenges today for a guy that wants to build a five-acre lake somewhere? Are there is a permitting process difficult? How how does that work?
SPEAKER_02You're you're right. Um I tell folks commonly that have a pond on their property already that it's in a lot of ways it's priceless because the regulatory structure is so demanding now that it's common for new ponds to just not be feasible, that you just cannot get the permits, or if you can get the permits, you can't afford the mitigation required to to to mitigate the loss of wetlands and streams. Uh so if you've got a piece of property that has an impoundment of any kind on it, arguably you've got something if if it was taken away from you, you couldn't just go buy another piece of property and build it back. You you can't do it. It's a it's a priceless asset.
SPEAKER_00Isn't there a regulation that that delineates big and small, like under 20 foot acres is a different r set of regulations than bigger than that?
SPEAKER_02There are some nuances associated with the permitting requirements, and it depends a lot on which state you're in. Uh there are both federal and state permits required. And it is a very difficult process to navigate, and it certainly is well worth hiring somebody up front to help you navigate that process before you get your heart set on building a lake on this piece of property that you've I've I experienced that, and it was twenty something years ago, probably the lake at the cabin and all that there.
SPEAKER_00Great example. It was in the upper end of a uh kind of limey Demopolis outcrop type of soil prairie, and um it had it was like a little drainage coming through it, but it was on the side of a hill, and you could have a six-inch rain and there wouldn't be any water left in it. You know, it was not a couldn't it by any standard it couldn't be considered a wetland. It was up on this side of a hill. And so we ended up having to go through that whole process, and then the way they did it, start up a bunch of people thinking I was gonna dam up the whole county, and then they had to go to the board and and it was ridiculous. Finally, they realized what was going on and it proved it. But then I had to go hire uh an environmental engineer or they wouldn't do it, and I had to pay them a couple times to come in and reavail and all that. And then we had to mitigate for cattle pasture. You know, it was like for a 21-acre lake, it was like four or five acres, maybe. And so we were able to, because we do have a lot of wetlands out there, we just the guy approved a strip that we could put aside forever and not worry about for that. But it you're right. It was I can't imagine it's worse now. That was 25 years ago. It's it's worse now. And it had just changed prior to that, it really wasn't that bad.
SPEAKER_03Uh so is there like a I don't want to say loophole, but is there like a size? Yeah, like if you're less than a certain acreage, Bobby mentioned five acres.
SPEAKER_02It it it varies depending on where you are. Okay. Uh and and it's not the same everywhere. Uh in Georgia, if you're impounding a lake that's less than 10 acres, the rules are a little bit more relaxed. But regardless of the size of the lake, they are if you're if you're impacting wetlands or streams, they will require mitigation. And mitigation is expensive. I mean, they've they've got something that's whoever the mitigation banker is, he's got something, and you he's the only game in town you have to buy from him.
SPEAKER_05Is this all driven by the the no net loss of wetlands at the core engineers? It is, yeah, it is.
SPEAKER_00What what I always do is not to get up on that rabbit hole, but you know, you've got uh something that you'd have to mitigate three acres worth to be able to create what you want. And what you're creating is actually 20 acres of wetlands, and he still won't let you do it, even though the net gain is 17 acres from you doing it. So it's that's what I would say it's over-regulated myself.
SPEAKER_02Ager's first rule of government logic and reason have no place. But it's easy to see why if you've got an existing lake on your plot. Oh, no question about it. It really simplifies your process of creating a good resource for you.
SPEAKER_04So the dates of just hiring somebody with a pan and a dozer and come, hey, build this three-acre lake, that those are kind of over with. You've got to get permits to do this sort sort of stuff.
SPEAKER_02That still goes on. That still goes on, and I'm not sure it's not even the majority. But it's no question uh not the legal way to go about building a lake. What could that person later down the road find themselves in a situation where might be. I've known I've known folks that that is exactly what happened.
SPEAKER_04And and uh uh So I've heard Hank Parker talk about a friend of his that built a large lake to use it to and was going to use it to pump out of to uh irrigate crops and stuff, and maybe that's is that what you're talking about? So that could be approved a little quicker, possibly could be. It could be.
SPEAKER_02Again, depending on the details.
SPEAKER_00So yeah, and I think that even once if it's crazy the uh boy understand some of the law was written, and I'm sure industry lobbyists worked this in years ago, but like the the timber and silver culture industry is immune to like the core engineer's domain of certain things. Now, I I you know correct me if I'm wrong out there, I'm not saying I know everything, but it once upon a time, you know, you they could not touch if it was to do with like growing trees or harvesting trees. So you could or if you remember we're at Portland, there was like a I want to say, was it 800 acres like uh water with with I think it's how much weight many hundreds of acres with cypress and a lot of those black gum and stuff like a forest of them in this beautiful and they went through areas all that down. Sure did and they couldn't and then they even drained some of it and they they couldn't touch them because it was silviculture practice. And I also know uh landowners that have drained like wetlands, drained wetlands, and they couldn't get in any trouble at all because they reforested in trees. So it's it's there's my point of that, there's a lot of nuances. Well, all the more reason you need a consultant to be sure and weigh through it for you.
SPEAKER_02And and at the very beginning, if you're absolutely just getting started, a good place to get at least some pretty good information is uh folks you already do business with, probably that's NRCS, natural resources conservation. Absolutely. Farm bill people. Uh they are about as knowledgeable as as as as you can find to to guide you in in what is and is not a feasible practice as far as building or repairing existing lakes go.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and if you've got a good one in your county, and I'm not saying they're not all good, but they're like any other job, there's some better. If you've got one that's really good, common sense, thorough, understands everything, works with you, man, it's just like that lake you said. That's a that's a big asset. You need to be sure you let them know you appreciate them. Yeah, shout out to our local. Yes, sir, they they are a great resource when they're working with you.
SPEAKER_04So, how many acres of runoff ideally would you like to see in a in somebody that's gonna build a lake for trophy bass?
SPEAKER_02For an upland lake, a lake with primarily watershed as a as a water supply, I'd like to see at least 20 acres of of uh watershed for every acre of impounded water. Uh and 30 to 40 is really not too much. Uh back in the old days, 50, 60 years ago, when pond management was really just getting started, uh, the kinds of fertilizer folks used back then, uh convention what I call conventional fertilizers were the devil to get to dissolve. You couldn't hardly make them dissolve. And and if you had a a lake that had a lot of water flushing through it, you simply couldn't dissolve the fertilizer fast enough to make it a uh a fertile lake. But with with the new products that are on the market today for fertilizing, uh, particularly something like Perfect Pond Plus is is just ideal. And and I've I've successfully fertilized lakes that have a 50 or 60 to 1 ratio. Uh lakes that other consultants had given up on and said you can't fertilize them. Uh if you use the right kind of fertilizer, it dissolves instantly and you start growing the basis for you for your food web out there initially uh very quickly, and it doesn't matter that it flushes through. Now it does make it a little more expensive. Right. But but with the old kind of fertilizers, you just couldn't do it. It didn't matter what the cost was.
SPEAKER_00Well, it's so much easier. So you what you're saying, if you have something that's on the higher end, say fifty sixty, and you're getting a big year like this with a lot of rain, you're gonna have to spend you know, you have to more fertilize more frequently. But the point about like perfect pond and that other stuff probably like it, but it's so much easier to have to go back and do it on top of that.
SPEAKER_02Oh yeah.
SPEAKER_00It dissolves it does dissolve and effective easy.
SPEAKER_04So that that's a higher uh runoff ratio than I was expecting you to say. I was expecting you to say about maybe five to seven.
SPEAKER_00I'm sure there's some nuance to that too, gradients.
SPEAKER_02There is, and that's what I was fixing to say. There one of the uh I guess you could call it an advantage or maybe a disadvantage, depending on your point of view, working with biology, with living things, is there are no hard and fast rules. There just ain't. And anybody who tries to tell you there are is either misinformed or just uninformed. A lake that has a lot of water running through it, uh, if you try to fertilize it, there may be some periods of time when you have high runoff that you choose not to fertilize it simply because it's flushing through so fast. That doesn't mean you can't fertilize it at other times of the year and get the benefits of fertilizing other times. So it's not an all or nothing kind of proposition necessarily. It just takes some imagination and and willingness to use a good scientistic scientific-based approach. Uh almost almost any body with water is is manageable to some degree.
SPEAKER_00So is there a difference in the the watershed runoff in a heavy clay versus a sandy soil soil? And in what's isn't that called perk? Yeah. So explain to people like what what's the definition of perk for?
SPEAKER_02Well, perk is is is what a lot of folks would call seepage. Uh seepage is what a lot of folks would call leaking. Uh and it's all the same thing. Yeah it depends on your approach. Right. If you're an engineer, it's seepage. If you're if you're if you're the guy on the traco trying to fix a leak, it's it's leakage. And if you're fertilizing, it's perk.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, because the the it's all the same thing. Yeah, and it and then it's more than just the surface perk. There's, for example, here is you get you get total runoff. Might as well be running off concrete because we've got a heavy clay, and a lot of times under there, not far, is a hard pan of lime rock, you know, and some of this prairie stuff. So everything hits the ground, it runs off like a, you know, in the city stuff. But then you've got some sandy soils with a harder pack underneath it. So there, but if you've got just I know we built one and it turned out great. There's a guy from Scuba, Mississippi is as good as I've ever seen, David Bryan, does an amazing job. And he told me when we built it, the one Bobby loves so much down there, I kind of did an oxbow lake because I knew the river would get in it. And, you know, used Barry and every, you know, to help me with it. But he he told me, he said, I'm pretty sure I can make this like you want it and make it locked tight. But I cannot promise you that. And I said, he said, if you're willing to take a chance, I said, I'll take a chance. And so he dug so deep where it was sandy, and when excavated some heavy, heavy clay, probably four feet of it, and did it, and it has worked beautifully. But again, he had to go, you had to have someone knew what they were doing, or what probably would have been a bad investment.
SPEAKER_02Not necessarily, even if he knew what he was doing, he could have encountered soil types that could have made it a total bust. Uh so having uh the ability to take a calculated risk is is is an advantage.
SPEAKER_00Yes. I have a cousin of mine, I'm gonna call his names, but he had a guy build a pond for him. They got a couple guys quoted, and this guy was cheaper and went out there and built he didn't court it or anything. And I remember he he called Chris Hawley about it. It's what's going on with my dam? I'm standing on the dam, and it's like I felt like I'm standing on jello, and it's a pretty good size lake. And he's like, he was like, get off of it right now, get off of it right now. And it literally in 30 minutes it blew out and he lost the whole lake. And the guy didn't do he didn't he got a guy who didn't know what he was doing, just had equipment. So you can the more experienced builders are very important.
SPEAKER_02There's a lot of folks out there that just because they they can operate a good trackhoe and can install coverts, there's an art form.
SPEAKER_00There's an art form to it. It really is.
SPEAKER_05Well, and your point too when he's digging, recognizing the soils where the seams are and what's gonna work.
SPEAKER_02You really need to know all that before you start digging. In other words, uh uh having somebody go out and and in the case of a small lake, you can do test pits with a backhoe and get a good idea of what to expect and and where you source the soil can be, but but uh uh you don't want to do that after you started constructing. Or way before construction began.
SPEAKER_04So are there new modern ways of doing drain pipes now that that pull that water off the bottom of the lake? Or is that something that's you uh you kind of frown in there when I ask you about that?
SPEAKER_02I I'm sorry, I can't help, but you couldn't be no more you couldn't really be more wrong. Okay. The the the primary spillway construction that's state of the art has been state of the art for about oh almost a hundred years, I guess. Uh uh standpiper risers in in one form or another uh are the without question the the the preferred primary spillway for lakes and ponds. Uh the materials that you build them out of nowadays are far improved, much better than we built them out of even 40 years ago. But uh with PVC and concrete, but uh a standpipe riser is is far superior to any other kind of primary spillway, uh, even on very large lakes. We're work we're working on a lake right now that's probably going to be in the neighborhood of 30-some odd acres. And uh the pipe through the dam will be a six-foot diameter pipe, but it's still going to be a standpipe riser, just a very big one uh for a lake that size. Uh you hear folks talk a lot about siphons. And siphons are sort of, I hate to say new because they've been around for close to 30 years now, but when PVC became popular for a building material, siphons uh they hold an attraction, and their attraction is you don't have to mut you don't have to move much dirt to install a siphon because it's it doesn't go to the bottom of the lake. It only crosses the dam up near the water line. And the amount of dirt you move is directly related to how much it's going to cost. So siphons are attractive because they're cheaper to install. Uh and they're particularly useful if you've got to renovate an old dam, a dam that maybe is on a pretty big lake that had a standpipe riser that deteriorated and no longer works. Uh it's very tempting to retrofit those kinds of old lakes with with uh a siphon system. There's some major disadvantages of a siphon system that almost nobody says anything about. One is the diameter. Um a siphon system, unlike a standpipe riser, uh the siphon has to completely fill with water for it to actually function as a siphon. So if you've got a 12-inch pipe, the water has to rise at least 12 inches before the siphon ever kicks in. And for an old dam that was engineered for a for a uh standpipe riser system, uh, it doesn't have necessarily the freeboard or the elevation in a secondary spillway that will allow the installation of that 12-inch siphon. That's kind of complicated to follow, but uh it it is it is not a it is not the savior of a lot of ponds that folks think they are. Also, if a if a siphon gets stopped up and they do from time to time get stopped up, they're almost totally uh isolated. You can't the everything is underground or underwater, and you can't you can't get to it to kill to to to uh clear any kind of clog or or accumulation of of of a of brush or or something as simple as a single turtle shell. Uh and once it's stopped up and you can't unstop it, you really don't have any other choices other than to abandon it and install another siphon. And uh so I I used to be a big fan of siphons and used a lot of them and have installed a lot of them. But uh if if if I've got my druthers, I'd much rather have an old standpipe riser than than any other kind of primary spillboard.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, that's what we want to learn. Um I'm sure this answer depends, but uh just say somebody wanted to build a new fishing lake, um, and they you know have a 40-acre place. And um anyway, the terrain may allow you to make a whatever size you want. What would be like the smallest you can get away with where you would say, you know, you can bring your family out on weekends and keep a few fish. And I mean, is there a I know there's gonna be a pond that's too small to be able to keep keep up with. So what what is that magic number?
SPEAKER_02It it really is hard to pin it to a number. Uh there's two primary factors that come into play. One is the physical size of the pond, how many gallons of water it holds. The smaller it is, and the fewer gallons of water it holds, the more difficult it's going to be to maintain good water quality. Uh and the the the second thing is that is a pond is a lot like a pie. In other words, your pie is limited to how big the pond is. And as you put fish in it, uh that fills up, that's the filling of your pie. And and when you start dividing it up between two or three different species, and then you take each species and divide them up into small ones and mediums and large. And this is an oversimplification, but suddenly your pie, you just don't have very many slices. You got a little bit of everything, but you ain't got much of nothing. Um what you can do with small lakes, say two acres and under, is abandon the approach of trying to grow your fish, raise your fish, in the lake. Instead stock your lake with fish that have been raised in a hatchery. It can be channel catfish, it can be striped bass hybrids, it could be largemouth bass that are feed trained. And you stock it with those, and you you absolutely ignore anything else that may be in the pond. You stock those fish, you feed them with pelleted food and an automatic fish feeder, and you fish them for a year, two years, maybe three years, maybe more. And as that fishery declines, you drain it, kill it out, and simply start over. And it makes great fishing. We talked about uh Steve's place in Georgia, uh for for those kids that he brings in. We've got a about an 11-acre pond that we've stocked with feed train largemouth bass and feed train striped bass hybrids. And it would scare you to think about falling in the water around one of them feed. It is the darndest fishery you've ever seen. I mean, it is I'd put it up against anybody's. Wow. And them hybrids now, they've been in there for three years. Their average size is about three and a half, four pounds. And they are absolutely all a Zebco 303 can handle. Uh, and you better hold on to the kid's belt. The good old Zebco 303.
SPEAKER_04I've heard those hybrids really fight good.
SPEAKER_02Uh, they're they're an excellent pond fish, and we treat them like folks 50 years ago treated catfish. In other words, if you just had a pond you wanted to stock something to catch. Instead of stocking catfish, stoco striped bass hybrids. They're a little more expensive to stock, but after you spread the cost out over four years of fishing, it's really not that big a deal.
SPEAKER_05I was gonna ask about the catfish ponds. When I was young, it seemed like they were everywhere and they were just what you were talking about. And is there much of that going on anymore? It just doesn't seem like there is.
SPEAKER_02There still is some. The reason it was so popular is not because catfish were such a great fish, it was because folks could raise them and sell them easily. And and that really guided a lot of pond management. Uh, it's not what you wanted to put in the lake, it's what you could get to put in the lake. And uh the drawback of of channel catfish, other than the fact that they're got poisonous stickers sticking out of them all over for kids to get hurt on, uh, is is the fact that they reproduce. They can reproduce very well in a pond. And once you've stopped them, after they've been in there a couple of years, they start to reproduce. And at that point, you don't have any idea how many fish you've got anymore, and you don't know how much to feed, and and they they don't tend to grow as well. And cause so so as long as you manage them on a two or three year cycle and start over, they work really, really great. But I'd still say that something like feed-trained largemouth or feed-trained hybrids are better. Just everybody knows that that in the summertime when it gets real hot, catfish kind of go dormant and don't feed much. Them hybrids, they still eating it up. They just turn the water white every time the feeder comes on.
SPEAKER_05Well, so with Steve's pond, will it you know have a life cycle and you'll restart, or does that one manage itself?
SPEAKER_02I'm fixing to I'm fixing to restock it with striped bass hybrids on top of what we've already got. Uh they've been they've been in there for three years. I'm fixing to restock this year. Uh, and I'm really not certain I need to restock, but I I don't want to risk you want to stay ahead of the curve. You want to stay a little bit ahead, so that's why we're stopping.
SPEAKER_03Those things are so fun to catch. They fight so hard. It's it's like a saltwater fish, you know. They fight hard.
SPEAKER_02And and in comparison to catfish, you're gonna have to mess with yucky, stinking bait, and stuff like that. You can throw a little spinnerbait out there and catch them hybrids all day long.
SPEAKER_00They shoot, they sure do eat good. Yeah, they are good. Yeah, the best way to get your catfish is in the river, though. Yeah. It's hard to beat flatheads. Uh it is hard to beat.
SPEAKER_02It is, it is. But the river's where they belong.
SPEAKER_00Oh, I know. I've I've learned from people, some some of the people that uh put them in uh ponds. I've talked about it a bit. Oh my gosh. They wipe it, they'll wipe it out.
SPEAKER_02Well, not necessarily, but more often than not, they will, yeah.
SPEAKER_03I I like what I'm hearing from you. Uh, you know, what I I I learned a couple of things in school, but but one of them was uh, you know, if if you're gonna be a biologist, you you need to be willing to tell your clients if they're if they're wrong or they're uh you know, you don't want to tell them what they want to hear. And a lot of them, a lot of folks want you to tell them what am I trying to say. What they want to hear, right? What the truth is, yes. And uh you've already corrected us twice. Um and and that's a great thing, you know. I'll tell you something.
SPEAKER_02One of my favorite. That's what we're paying you to do, you know. I had a guy call me when I just had begun this kind of work. It's been 15 years ago, and he was a city boy. And he was admitted he was a city boy, and he bought him a farm and had it, and he and when he called me, he had already contracted with somebody to build him a lake, and they'd built him a lake, and he had already got he had already ordered him some fish to stock meet. And somehow or other he got in his mind that that he needed now to call me. And and and and the pond was in the process of filling up. And and when he called me, I could see lots of things that he should have done differently. But the primary one, as I asked him, I said, uh, have you killed the fish out that are in the lake? And he said, Well, there are no fish in the lake. We just built the lake. I said, Oh no, there's there's fish in there. He said, Well, there ain't no way there's fish in there. I said, I seen it, it was dry as a bone, there ain't no way there's fish in there. I said, Well, if it was dry as a bone, I said, Well, how's it filling up with water? He said, Well, there's a spring over there in that corner right yonder in that spring. I said, Well, where was that spring when you were building the lake? I said, It was it was there then and it it had water. And where water is, fish are. It's a very simple rule. Where there's water, there's fish.
SPEAKER_00Sometimes.
SPEAKER_02Well, this guy said, There ain't there was no fish in here. He said, I don't care what you're saying. There wasn't no fish in here. He said, He said, Let's go ahead and stock it. And I said, Okay, we'll stalk her. And uh about 18 months later, I said, we're gonna go out and monitor and see how you stock fish you've done. And we went out there and we'd stock we had stocked largemouth bass, bluegill, and shellcrackers. We hadn't stocked threadfish head yet.
SPEAKER_00Did you do any like fathead minnows, anything like that? No. And and probably good you didn't.
SPEAKER_02Right, because when we went out there, I think we sampled 13 different species of fish. Three of which we had stocked. The other 10 were there, obviously. And probably some of the other three that we stocked were there already.
SPEAKER_00You probably had some kind of rarer stuff if you had a spring there, you know, fresh water.
SPEAKER_02One of the things made this unusual is he had uh uh uh a crop of red fin pickerel. Do you know red fin pickerel? Wow. Uh it's a fairly common, but sort of an obscure little fish that that that is a little giant, it's a little predator that only gets to be about 10 inches long, and and and he had had them in there. But it was a a good example of how you you you don't get started with a good pond. You don't get started.
SPEAKER_04Did he believe you when all that was over?
SPEAKER_02Did he think you had stock those with your it enhanced my credibility a little bit? I bet so.
SPEAKER_00Well, you know, it leads me to that great side say you to yesterday. It's like, and someone gave it to Cuz, but then Cuz said and I adopted it all the time. In life, whatever, everything, especially in business or whatever, too. Don't guide the guide. Don't coach the coach either.
SPEAKER_04Don't coach the both of those. Toxie, why is it when I borrow something from Jerry Clower, I steal it? When you borrow something from Cuz, you adopt it. What's the difference?
SPEAKER_00Well, I mean, because you don't say where you got it from. You just claim it like it's yours. I always give author to the author the credit. Okay. You see how this goes. It's rough, right? Well, I'm trying to I'm trying to bring him up, you know, teach him right, but he just he's kind of rebellious.
SPEAKER_04So Les, what what are the mistakes you see most fit folks making with their ponds?
SPEAKER_02The one I just described is the most common. Uh-huh. Uh not killing out before they get started. Uh and the way you do that would be rotinone. It is, and it's especially hard right now because worldwide, I guess, there's a shortage of rotinone.
SPEAKER_06Wow.
SPEAKER_02There it's not a as far as I'm aware, it is for the most part, totally unavailable in the marketplace.
SPEAKER_00Well, is it is it used for other things besides that?
SPEAKER_02Yes, but they're all pretty closely related. It's used in crawfish culture a lot. Well. But for the most part, it's and it's used, at least it used to be used a lot uh as an insecticide for some vegetable crops.
SPEAKER_00Wow.
SPEAKER_02But I'm not sure that's still the case. There may be better insecticides now than there used to be.
SPEAKER_00So chemically it takes all the oxygen out of the water.
SPEAKER_02So it doesn't matter.
SPEAKER_00What does it do then? I always thought that's what it did.
SPEAKER_02It it binds to the red blood cells in the fish's blood. How about that? And the fish then is unable to absorb oxygen from those blood cells. So the the fish, for all practical purposes, suffocates. Right. But not because the oxygen was removed from the water.
SPEAKER_00Uh same thing, just different chemistry I didn't understand.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Um so they come up to the surface, and that's why people can dip them out pretty quick and they're harm, you know, good to eat and all that stuff.
SPEAKER_02They're good to eat, they're dead.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. That's right. No, no, no. You can't go use them somewhere, yeah.
SPEAKER_02But it's it's a it's a plant-based insecticide. Wow. Uh that is, I think, largely found in plants that are native to South America and the company that certain legume plants put it, put it together, uh, has shut down and and don't have a plan for exactly when they're going to open. So it's really a tough time right now for how to start a pond correctly. The only other toxicant that you really is a practical alternative is uh chlorine.
SPEAKER_05Oh man.
SPEAKER_02You you you treat it just like it's a swimming pool.
SPEAKER_00Well, couldn't the but the best alternative wouldn't the best alternative today then be a completely dried out pond? You can't do that.
SPEAKER_02You can't do that. Uh it's well, it's one of those things that sounds good on paper uh and it's great to talk about, but when you get out there on the ground, there this that that kind of an environment just doesn't typically exist.
SPEAKER_00So um yeah, I guess we're delineating between a new pond you built, you could do that, surely.
SPEAKER_02It's a very rare pond, and you can see the evidence of this. You'll you'll look out on a pond and you'll see places where there's patches of timber or old stumps sticking up. The reason those old stumps were there is because that ground was too moist when they built that pond to get out there and remove them. So they left them. And moisture, water is is going to harden. So it's it's very, very rare to actually ever run across a completely dry pond. Right. Now hatchery ponds are built to drain completely. Right. So on a hatchery, it's very different.
SPEAKER_00But uh I'm starting with a cattle pasture that has nothing, and I'm starting from scratch building my pond. I mean, and there's not any water anywhere around, would it not be clean when you stock it? Because I've never done anything with those but stock them, and I've never honestly probably built ten. I've never had a contam lucky, I hadn't had a contamination.
SPEAKER_02If it's a completely dug pond, in other words, strictly dug, no runoff that goes into it, then then that may will be the case. Okay. And and you're safe there. But outside the coastal plain, you don't get that very often. Uh most of the ponds do have some runoff, and anytime there's runoff or when there's groundwater.
SPEAKER_00Well, yeah, most of the good sites you can kind of pick them out on a topo map to start with, so there would be runoff in them. So you're right about that.
SPEAKER_04So about uh I don't know, seven, eight years ago, I I've like all my life been looking for a place to build a pond.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, I was thinking about when he was talking about the right process, I was thinking about your journey.
SPEAKER_04I found a place. I f I was looking one day on Mallshield properties, and there was a about a 40-acre place popped up around Carthage, and it looked like to me you could build a 25-acre, about a 25-acre lake on it. It I I got so excited about just looking at the topo. And when I rode down there and looked at it, I had totally read the topo backwards.
SPEAKER_0525 acres of you can do it if you're not. Wait just a minute.
SPEAKER_00And sometimes you're looking at a big place, you can be confusing even to an experienced person. That whoa, whoa, stop. Is that which way is that again? You know, yeah, that's a hurt my feelings.
SPEAKER_04So that's a lot of what other mistakes are guys making? I know I know you're gonna go if they're not taking enough fish out.
SPEAKER_02Uh the common mistakes are stocking improperly. Uh, you know, that's oftentimes masked by the fact that they left wild fish in the basin to start with. But even if they got rid of the wild fish, it's pretty common for folks to want to stock fish that come from an unreliable source. It may be intentional on their part. They may want to stock crappie or or pickerel or any number of species, but just as frequently they'll stock them inadvertently. They'll contract with a consultant that sells fish. Uh almost none of the consultants that sell fish, almost none of them have a hatchery. They almost all buy their fish from a hatchery and hold them in tanks, haul them on the back of a pickup truck, and and distribute them that way. And it's really, really easy to take a tank of fish and and not realize that it's been contaminated with species that you don't want. Or for that matter, it could even be a species that you don't want because at real small sizes, a lot of layman wouldn't know a bluegill if he bit them. So there is a certain amount of trust involved in in dealing between the landowner and a and a good consultant. And and good consultants are not as easy to find as you as you think they are. There's a lot of folks out there don't have a lot of experience, and they're they're trying to do it in a way that maximizes or uh uh maximizes their income. And uh sometimes you don't get what you bargained for. And you don't find out that you didn't get what you bargained for until three years later. And somebody says, Well, where where did these green sunfish come from that are in my pond? Well, the guy who stocked your fish probably stocked them. And didn't he may not have even realized it.
SPEAKER_00That would probably be one of the easiest ones to get in there, I would think, too, isn't it?
SPEAKER_02They're one of the more resolute species out there. Yes. Remember, too, though, that one reason we deal with largemouth bass and bluegill, they're pretty darn adaptive creatures, too. They're they're hardy and they'll do real well in a variety of environmental conditions.
SPEAKER_00Large mouth is invasive in a lot of areas. Yeah, they're awesome. So I was going to ask you, are there other brim sunfish type species that are I know it's just about completely taken over with copper nose these days, but are there others that are just as compatible and a good pairing with the the bass? No, they're they're pretty much a copper nail. That's it.
SPEAKER_02Bluegill is it because they have the capability, unlike almost other sun almost all other sunfish. Not everyone, but most of them. Right. Uh most sunfish spawn typically once a year. Right. Uh shell crackers, you you I'm sure fished them.
SPEAKER_00Oh, yeah.
SPEAKER_02They they they spawn once a year.
SPEAKER_00And they were a great combination too. They don't bother anything much, do they?
SPEAKER_02They don't bother anything, but they don't produce enough to be a valuable forage for bass. W when when when you've got uh the need for forage, you need bluegill. Right. And it's because bluegill are so cotton picking productive, right? You know, they spawn starting in probably in April, maybe even in March some years, and they'll spawn off and on all summer long. That's incredible. And and it it it it is incredible, and it's in it's incredibly necessary if you're trying to support a crop of bass in the lake because there just is no substitute for having a lot of bluegill. Now you can supplement bluegill with some other things like shell crackers, who may help a little bit, but they can't carry the load like bluegill can.
SPEAKER_00No. And then of course the the shad are great.
SPEAKER_02Shad are helpful, but they're nowhere near as valuable as those bluegill are.
SPEAKER_00It's kind of a good analogy to say this, it's like you have this property you're managing for wildlife, and um the the top priority is to manage the native habitat to support, you know, the carrying capacity you have and all, and making that healthy, and not just put a bunch of feeders out there and think you can do that. You know, so that bluegill is the staple you have to have, and you couldn't do that with another species, really.
SPEAKER_02In a lot of ways, feeders are are a trap. Yeah. Uh folks get focused on their feeders, and they think that that feeder, and maybe they've got several feeders, and they think that that's really important. It's nowhere nearly as important as fertilizing at lake. That fertilizer affects every cotton-picking fish in the lake. The feed only affects the fish that are hanging around the feet.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it makes copper nose bluegill bigger, and it's they that's probably as good a tasting fish as you'll ever eat. Is that for everybody? Oh my goodness, they're incredible. So don't you think one of the top mistakes, at least for me, it has been the top mistake probably, is just under harvesting.
SPEAKER_02It's very common. It's the the most common problem I encounter is folks that have too many biceps and and and can't harvest enough. And it's because, in a lot of ways, it's because they don't have the time to devote to it. But more than that, even if they had the time to devote to it, I just don't think they've got the physical capacity to remove enough fish. And it varies a lot from one lake to another. You there's no way anyone can sit here and tell you for sure how many fish need to be removed from a lake until they've done enough sampling in lake over a period of time to define it. Uh every lake is a little bit different. I've got some lakes where we'll take out a couple hundred bass a year, and other lakes the same size, we may take out a thousand. Right. And the same size body of water managed the same way, just tremendous differences in carrying capacity. Right. And there's no there's no there's no explaining that.
SPEAKER_00I remember him telling me, Barry, of course, I'm we always kind of go back to him here. Uh and I I may be wrong, but I think he said he, you know, we were just discussing possibilities, he said, well, in general, the larger the lake, the more it tends to kind of manage itself a little better than a smaller lake, and then it add the soil type and the depth and amount of cover too. But he said, in general, you know, if you had a bigger lake with everything done right, you would kind of re you know, it would let off a little of your pressure to be so regimented on your harvest.
SPEAKER_02It buffers your effects. Uh a little lake, a little resource of any kind, it can be a food plot.
SPEAKER_06Yeah.
SPEAKER_02The smaller it is, the more the more reactive it is to things that happen. So uh a large lake is in many ways easier to manage than a small lake is.
SPEAKER_03What about what about a bunch of trees around the edge of a lake? Um I you know, I'm uh I'm sure you'll cover trees growing on a dam. I don't know if you know you I hear that's not good, but I'm talking about the rest of the lake. Uh would you rather see a bunch of mowed grass up to the edge, or do you like it to be forested or a mix, or does it matter?
SPEAKER_02In all honesty, it probably doesn't matter as much as as folks like you and I think it should. Uh if you go to a fish hatchery where they're making their living selling fish, the more they can grow, the better. They got no trees, they got no special way they take care of the shoreline. Uh the reason is because it doesn't affect fish. It affects the fisherman, affects the user. So you can manage the shoreline in your lake to suit your own personal preferences. Okay. Fish don't really care. Uh it may affect your ability to catch them. You know, I love to popping bug fish and and fly fish for bluegill, and and it's tough to do that on a lake where the shoreline is 15 feet back from the end of wax myrtles.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Uh and and and so I like it a little cleaner. On the other hand, I I don't like the opposite. Uh, I've got some clients that insist on taking glyphosate and riding around the pond on their four-wheeler, spraying glyphosate around the edge to kill every single thing right down to the edge of the water. And you can look at those ponds and they're aging dramatically in a short period of time, faster than they should, because that those clean shorelines just begin to erode and slough off, and water that used to be two and a half feet deep, three feet from shore, is now a foot and a half deep, three feet from shore, and and decrease them. So uh but the fish the fish are much more resolute than you think they are, so i it's really a matter of personal fisherman preference.
SPEAKER_03That is weed eating with herbicides is a pet peeve of mine. It's a terrible thing. Yeah, I hate it.
SPEAKER_04Um well what about the what about the the all-female ponds? Uh that we, you know, Barry's taught us about those through the years, and I think you guys worked closely together to kind of create that whole formula.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, we did. This was back probably about 2000, 2001. Uh, I can remember sitting around talking with Barry and and discussing options. They had a big lake that they were involved with down on the Georgia coast. And at coincidentally, I was still working with DNR at the time. We were building a big lake in central Georgia, about 100 acres. And and maybe by a year, I I think we stocked that lake in in Middle Georgia. And it as far as I'm aware, it was probably the first lake ever stocked, at least in the south here, with females only. And that was in 2002. Uh, in four years, they they they found a 14 and a half pound largemouth in that lake. Uh it was looking by it was an incredible experience to be involved with the management of it. And and uh unfortunately it was built in an area with a lot of limestone, and uh uh before it could get much older, uh uh a sinkhole erupted and and the lake left.
SPEAKER_05Oh wow.
SPEAKER_02They it essentially had to rebuild the lake and and and and scrap what they had done to that point. But uh that was the first attempt at all female bass. Of course, all females that strategy is is aimed at reducing and controlling the number of bass in uh in the lake so that there's you minimize the competition for resources.
SPEAKER_00And it doesn't explode, you know, it exponentially grows, you know, because it doesn't grow at all. Yeah, I'm just saying if you have male and female, it grows so exponentially. It's like you think you've got a problem this year with this hatch. Wait till those all hatch and the next year and then the next year, and it's like this big upside-down pyramid.
SPEAKER_02Uh but if you stock only only females, you don't have that in in that way, it's a much simpler management plan.
SPEAKER_06Yeah.
SPEAKER_02It's really, really simple. You stock the devil out of forage fish, try to maximize your forage fish production, and just let the largemouth take care of themselves. I've heard folks talk about you need to restock periodically and whatnot. That's something you probably want to do from time to time, but the fish are not going to respond to it very well. All you need is leave the fish alone and let them grow.
SPEAKER_00I guess if a guy really wanted, he was all caught up in wanting to do that, you would say, well, do, you know, do just do a census and see what's going on before we do something like that.
SPEAKER_02Well, and and something I've never heard anybody mention, but something we all, I say we all, I think all the reputable uh folks that are using all female bass as a strategy, uh, we're using pit tags on all our fish. Yeah. Uh, which is like chipping your dog. We each each bass out there, we've got a name, he's got a name, he's got a number, uh, and we can keep up with them and monitor real closely how they perform. Uh so as the future unfolds over the next couple of decades, it'll be real interesting to see uh from a genetic standpoint how we are using these tools and how we can modify and select for various traits. That's wild. It is wild. It's way out in the future, though.
SPEAKER_00Oh, it's yeah, so yeah, so cool to contemplate doing that. We actually had the one spot here at the Marseille Golf course. We did that. Question I had on that well, also, is there an additional benefit of some weight gain from not having to go through the rigors of the spawn, too?
SPEAKER_02Oh gosh, that's that's almost unquantifiable.
SPEAKER_00Wow.
SPEAKER_02So there's a lot of that on top of the the the uh the amount of stress that a bass endures to spawn, if you just sort of think about it day by day, it's an incredible amount of stress. It's incredibly difficult for a fish and causes them to they use energy to survive it all. Right. And that's energy that can't contribute to growth. Right. Uh so yeah, the the fact that they don't have to chase each other around, the fact that they don't have to fan beds, the fact that they don't actually expel any eggs, they just reabsorb them all. All that makes life easier for them, and they survive in greater numbers and to grow better.
SPEAKER_04Well, so in today's world, a guy uh used to would have to take a shocking boat out and shock up to see some see the fish and lay for you guys to lay eyes on them. With the new technology with these live scopes, can a biologist uh can can a guy put a boat in with one of those screens and and get a good idea what's in his lake and the there are some new software out there, new apps with with sonar that allows you to enumerate and and approximate the size distribution of fish that you pass over with your with your uh uh with your sonic gear.
SPEAKER_02Um I'm very skeptical that they would be accurate enough to really be very helpful. For example, if i they'll they'll tell you up front that it they they only work in water that's three feet or large or or greater in depth. They don't work in shallow water. Well anybody who bass fishes knows that there's a lot of bass in less than three feet of water. A lot. Some days all of them are less than three foot deep. Uh on top of that, uh if you see a bass, if if the electronics sees and counts a bass, who's to say that it didn't see and count that bass multiple times while you're out there on the lake. So I again I'm I'm sort of skeptical of it, and I don't think there's any substitute for the traditional kinds of sampling methods that we use. Uh extra bells and whistles might attract some clients, but I think you're still gonna see us manage lakes with an electrofishing boat.
SPEAKER_05Okay. Yeah. Lenny, look like you got a question. Yeah, I appreciate y'all giving me a chance to ask something. Lenny, don't do. Thank you. Don't ask him his favorite color worm. Okay. I've noticed it. And I'm gonna bring it back to myself. I appreciate you saying that because I am, you know, a a DIY kind of guy, and maybe some of the people out there, you know, might have access to a lake, but can't necessarily, you know, afford to start from scratch and all those other kinds of things. So can you kind I mean if you were, you know, to Dudley's point, just got 40 acres and there's a five-acre lake on it, you know. What you know, what ironically, yeah, few things could you do. I understand. It sounds like fertilization is numero uno. So what would be the the the next couple things after that? Or are there any?
SPEAKER_02There are, and and even before you decide to fertilize, you need to have water tests. Yeah, water quality and make sure your lime content is adequate for your fertilizer to really be effective. Is that a pH? It's it it can be a pH, but pH is in the water. PH is not a very reliable way of measuring buffer capacity. A better way is to measure alkalinity or total hardness. Those are simple tests to run. You can go get you a water bottle, fill it up with pond water, take it to your county agent. He'll send it to the university lab and they'll tell you what it is.
SPEAKER_05Uh what about a pool test kit? I mean, I've seen alkalinity and peaches.
SPEAKER_02The range that those kits are made for are not appropriate for pond water. Gotcha. We're working it at much lower concentrations than in swimming pools.
SPEAKER_00Gotcha. So I remember Barry going water in a test tube, and he was just putting a drip at a time and watching it. They make I guess to turn color, it was a long time ago, and he kept on putting just the the one at Shamola. Drips in it. Yeah, which is uh pretty high pH soil, too. And he just kept doing drips in it, and I don't know, he got up in the teens and it didn't do, you know, and he finally looked at me and he just tossed the water out and said, You're not gonna have a problem with alkalinity.
SPEAKER_02What he was doing is he was measuring almost certainly total hardness. Right. That's a real reliable method. Total hardness. Uh each drop rest represented one part per million in total hardness. Wow. And and total hardness for effective fertilization. The target is usually about 20 parts per million. 20. If you can get to 15, you're comfortable. Yeah. And if it's below 15.
SPEAKER_00I think I remember him saying 16, and at 16 is when he tossed the water. He said, You're not gonna have a problem and worry about something else. Yeah. So we really need to do that before I fertilize.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, you do.
SPEAKER_00You do.
SPEAKER_05It's kind of like the food plot. I mean, you might be wasting the fertilizer if you don't.
SPEAKER_02That's exactly the a good analogy, is the food plot.
SPEAKER_05So we we get a water quality test first. County agent tells us our hardiness, and it needs to be between, did you say, 15 to 20?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, 15 to 20. Uh, if it's not between 15 to 20, if it's lower than 15, you've got to add lime. Okay. And that is a formidable task. Uh typically, lime recommendations are in the tons of lime per acre. We deal with that with food plots. Well, the difference is you can't drive your spreadsheet. That's right.
SPEAKER_00Barge thing to do it, it's not cheap to do the lime.
SPEAKER_02And it it's not that the expense is so great, it's that it takes a lot of sweat. Yeah, the instrument is. It takes a lot of a lot of effort. Uh, but it's un there there's no substitute for it. You can't get around it. Uh, but but no question, head and shoulders above everything else, a good fertilization program is the best thing you can do for a pond. The reason for that is that a pond can support X number of fish. It can be pounds or it can be numbers, doesn't matter how you but it can support probably three to four times that if you fertilize it successfully.
SPEAKER_05Gotcha.
SPEAKER_02Wow, so quadruples of carry capacity.
SPEAKER_04So while while we're here, and I don't want to put words in your mouth and I don't want to lead the witness, if you will, but what specifically I want to ask you like right now we're in this heat advisory. Would you, if if a guy was on a cycle of fertilizing every month or every six weeks, but we got into this heat all of a sudden, would you avoid fertilizing during this really hot weather?
SPEAKER_02It'll depend on the the the lake. Um I try to err on the on the side of of good fertilization. In other words, I'd rather over-fertilize and under-fertilize. If I have a relatively minor fish kill because I've over fertilized a lake and the owner gets mad with me, I can stand that. I'd rather do that than see him miss carrying capacity to be lower than what it nearly needs to be. I'd rather see it overdone than underdone. Now, having said that, uh The way you fertilize is you measure water clarity. And if water clarity, in other words, you can see an object more than about twenty inches down, the lake probably needs fertilizer. And you fertilize it, wait a week or two, measure it again. Twenty inches down. Yeah. So that if your lake in the heat of the summer has been fertilized up until the heat wave comes, uh it's very likely that if you've done it right, the visibility of the water is going to begin to stay the same. It's not going to require as much fertilizer as that water warms up as it used to. And and it has a way then of regulating itself, and you don't get into problems like that. But that's the guideline for fertilizing, is you do it based on water clarity.
SPEAKER_05So figure out a total hardiness, fertilize according to what you're talking about. And then is there a step three after that?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, the third step is to be sure you harvest enough largemouth bikes. There you go. And and that's I I hesitate to say that because it's almost impossible for you to do.
SPEAKER_05Yes, sir.
SPEAKER_02You don't fish. The way you fish, you're not targeting six-inch bass. You're targeting 20 inches.
SPEAKER_07Well, you'd be surprised when he catches one. What about establishing, you know, establish late, uh, adding structure? Like, is there different types of structure you can add, you know, after establish late?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, there is. Uh structure is another it's sort of like the shoreline vegetation. It has almost absolutely nothing to do with how good the fish population is. Uh adding structure for the most part is not going to really affect a good balanced lake in terms of fish population. What it will change is your ability to find and catch fish. Uh and simple things. Uh one of the common things we'll use on new lakes is is rocks. Just piles of riprap. Uh, I can't explain it. There's lots of things about fish I can explain, but I know them nevertheless. And and bass are just attracted to cotton picking rocks.
SPEAKER_06They like rocks.
SPEAKER_02They they hang around them all the time. And simply dumping a load of riprap in a lake will make you a really good spot to fish. Now, if your lake is established, you get it's not dry and you can't do that. Uh you can do other things. Woody structure is really hard to beat.
SPEAKER_07Uh like old Christmas trees, something like that.
SPEAKER_02I I I I wouldn't use the term Christmas tree, cedar trees.
SPEAKER_07Okay.
SPEAKER_02Uh a lot of the a lot of the Christmas trees, even though they're evergreens, are not as uh They're fast grown and they rot quick. They they do. They do. And and and cedar trees, you you know if you got any fence posts, they last forever. They're there. So you get the most most bang for your buck out of cedar trees. Uh I use some artificial uh attractors as well. Uh artificial attractors have the advantage of never rotting away. They're there forever, at least if you've selected them well. Uh the downside is that you just about can't replicate Mother Nature. You just can't put a uh a man-made structure out there that is as diverse in what it offers fish as a cedar tree or uh other other natural vegetation. Uh the closest I've come uh is is some packing materials. Things like flower pots, big tree flower pots, uh vegetable crates, like the peach farmers and the onion farmers use to bring produce in out of the fields. Big, strong, articulated, uh just lots of little nooks and crannies, just very complex structures. They make excellent fish attractors. Like stacking pallets, maybe? Sort of like pallets are not as good because they're made out of wood. They'll rot away. Uh something made a plastic pallet, for instance, uh several pallets structured in a way to to make them diverse would be a good good fish attractor. Uh I see a lot of folks use PVC and and PVC is okay. I just don't understand why you'd spend that much money, because PVC is expensive. Uh they they they're they're not as good as some simpler materials. A trash can, like you see sitting on the side of the highway. A trash can with some holes drilled in it. That makes a pretty darn good fish tractor. It looks look looks if you look at it on your depth finder, it looks just like a stump.
SPEAKER_04I hadn't thought about that. So to co go back to that fertilizer, d am I right you get started when the water in the spring when the water temperature is about sixty? It's better to start too early than be too late. And then how long it through the summer do you typically until the water temperature falls back into the low sixties.
SPEAKER_02Which is which is usually about first of November. And it is there a pond fertilizer you prefer? No question. Uh perfect pond plus. Uh I'd be I'd be lost without it. I buy probably 200 tons a year. Hey, hit the horn. Customer of the year over here. Yep. Uh I don't know how it was developed. Uh, I do know who developed it and who was who played a hand in it. Yes. And and the they they knew what we needed, and they created a product that was just exactly what we needed. Yeah. Uh it's it's unmistakable. There's really no substitute for it. It's a good one.
SPEAKER_03What do you say to the person that um gets fertilizer and gets that bloom and then never puts the fertilizer out again that summer?
SPEAKER_02They've wasted their time. Okay. Wasted their first application. Uh and and a lot of folks that should know better do that.
SPEAKER_03I mean So you should either do it or not.
SPEAKER_02Right. Right. And this would be, I mean And the same's true over a period of years. In other words, you you wouldn't it wouldn't be good for your fish population to be fertilized one year and then not fertilize it the next year. It's it's like you've built up this big population, and then suddenly you cut off all their groceries.
SPEAKER_05Uh-huh.
SPEAKER_02Uh it it really unbalance your population.
SPEAKER_05So when the water temperature gets to 60 and above, and then till it drops below 60.
SPEAKER_03And you keep that visibility 20 or less. Yep. Less than 20. Yep. And do you need a setchy disc, or can you just drop an old white shoe of Bobby?
SPEAKER_05Yeah, Bobby's got some white shoes.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, uh, uh, a croc, a yellow crocode would be just about right. Okay. Okay.
SPEAKER_05Did y'all hear him a minute ago? He said crappy. I did hear crappy. He's he's from East Tennessee. Yeah, I was kind of a little shocked there.
SPEAKER_00He was he was not talking about the fish, Bobby. He was talking about what kind of partner they are with largemouth. And they're a really crappy partner. That's true. So right?
SPEAKER_02Right. You saved me. Yeah, that's right. That's right. If I was talking about fish, I'd said crappie.
SPEAKER_03Have you ever heard of people calling a red ear a chink a pen?
SPEAKER_02I have.
SPEAKER_03That's what I grew up calling them, and I I don't you don't ever hear that much. There's shellcrackers working. Shellcracker. Yeah, the shellcracker.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, and and uh uh it's interesting. Uh uh they they they've they've been one of the most frustrating fish for me. Uh there are one fish that I have been remarkably unsuccessful at catching. Uh I'm just not a good shellcracker fisherman. Don't they? Don't they good work? Aren't worms good? I know all the standard. I mean, I understand what what I'm doing wrong. I just can't seem to rectify.
SPEAKER_00You know, we we used to convicted growing up. I did a ton of cane pole brim fishing with crickets and stuff. And you would but my grandfather, he even had a fishing club on a lake that they go to. He loved to fish more than anything. But he would always say, you know, put a red worm on if you want to catch some of them. And but we still never caught many. It was kind of a novelty when you did catch one.
SPEAKER_02They are tough. They're tough for me. Although I know some guys who who wear them out and do and they get so big, it's they're good.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, it seems like on average they're bigger than your typical bluegills. Oh, yeah. By a lot. But during that, you know, during that spawn when you catch those big old bull brim and big old bluegills, they're they're hard to beat in size.
SPEAKER_02You're right. You're right. And and uh one of the surprising things, and I don't think I'm the only one who's learned it, but one of the surprising things that we've learned in managing for for really trophy largemouth is that in the same ponds, we're turning out some really fine bluegill fishing, too. I'm talking about honest to goodness, 20, 25 ounce bluegill. That's great. Uh pound and a quarter, pound and a half, pretty commonly. Big bluegill are so funny. And nobody really expected that in a lake where you're trying to grow a tremendous density of bluegill. But if you get a few of them big ones that get beyond the the the their they've got an advantage over the vast majority, they grow awfully big.
SPEAKER_03Um, do folks still draw down their ponds in the winter?
SPEAKER_02Is that still a common practice to, you know, like let the bass eat more of the it's used sometimes in in in pretty rare instances it's used to try to correct problems with balance, but I see it more as a problem than anything else. I I see it pretty commonly where and I'm not sure whether it's false economy or or just lack of knowledge, but I see folks that that they don't have adequate water supply to keep their lake full, and rather than turn on the pump and and and and pay to keep it full, they'll just let the pond go down a foot or two in the heat of the summer. If you think about it, that's probably the worst thing you could possibly do because it's in the middle of the growing season and you're losing you're having a a a negative effect for maybe a two or three month period in the middle of the growing season. So instead of an eight-month growing season, you end up with a five-month or four-month growing season and and you're concentrating those fish in a smaller body of water, and that favors uh the largemouth bass, makes it easier for them to to prey on bluegill, and that shifts your pond completely out of balance. You end up with more bluegill more largemouth than you need. Uh so it creates problems for you, and that's not as readily apparent to folks as it needs to be. Uh they they're not saving a dime by not not running the pump. They ought to turn the pump on and keep the lake full.
SPEAKER_04Well, speaking of growing, what's the biggest bass that you've have grown in one of the your your ponds that you manage?
SPEAKER_02Uh I never know for certain because obviously owners and and fishermen can take fish and I'm not aware of it. Uh but the biggest fish that that I've actually have reliable information about are 14 and a half pounds. It's the biggest one. Uh several fish in the 13s.
SPEAKER_05Bobby, would you quit drooling over that?
SPEAKER_02That's a big fish.
SPEAKER_05Wipe your mouth.
SPEAKER_04What's the biggest you've ever caught, personally? 12 and a quarter. Wow. 12-2.
SPEAKER_00I got 12-2.
SPEAKER_04I saw a picture of you kissing it. I don't know. I just kissed it.
SPEAKER_00That's the only one I've ever known. That's the only one. I mean, intentionally, it's the only one I've ever killed. I didn't. I just wanted to mount the fish. So I understand. You know, that one time, because it was in a pond. First one we ever built there, you know. And the thing about that one is I learned about the all Floridas. You can grow a tremendous fish, but you might not ever get him to touch a bait.
SPEAKER_02Well, and the the the one I'm most proud of, I guess, is is I caught one out of that state lake that I told you was the first all-female lake. Wow. I caught one out of it that weighed ten and a quarter on a popping bug and fly.
SPEAKER_05Oh my god. I bet that was fun.
SPEAKER_02And of course had to release him.
SPEAKER_04So he would feel that. Did she just come up and just suck it? Or did you know she was a big fish at the as soon as she sucked it in?
SPEAKER_02No, we in that lake in particular, I and I see this with female-only lakes, those those big females will act differently than they act in a conventional kind of a lake. You'll see a fish up on shore, not on shore, but up in real shallow water, uh cruising, chasing, looking for looking to, I think they're probably looking to trap something against the bank so they can get it. And uh so it's common to see them before you ever get them to bite. And that's what I saw that day. I was out there fishing and easing around, looking, and and a lot of times just listening to hear a fish up there feeding in that shallow water. And once you hear one in a particular location in that female-only lake, that fish is gonna stay right there in that area, general area. And I just fished it with popping bug, and yeah, she she wasn't bashful about hitting it, she hit it real hard.
SPEAKER_03Oh wow.
SPEAKER_02I bet that was a fight.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, that's a dream come true right there. A huge largemouth on a on a fly.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah. I like I say that's my my proudest fish, I think.
SPEAKER_04Were you rigged to catch a large fish or you were you brim fishing?
SPEAKER_02No, no, I was fishing in a lake where that that was my target.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, okay. What kind of what kind of leader would you have on for on a popping bug trying to catch a big bass?
SPEAKER_02I'm a very unsophisticated fly fisherman. I don't have a lot of intricate gear. It was a it was a flat piece of 15-pound monofilament, probably tied to the fly line. Uh well just trying to learn here.
SPEAKER_00I mean, yeah, but uh probably wants to know about their lakes and their ponds and how to manage fish, and you're you're getting free advice on how to catch them.
SPEAKER_03You go ask them what color the lure was next.
SPEAKER_02You may you I can't send an invoice.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah. You actually could the feature goes directly to Bobby. Uh my goodness here.
SPEAKER_04Well, nothing's free this worthwhile, Bobby. We've we've got a few more little questions. Uh we really didn't hit on Shad, and I wanted to ask you about crawfish. Is that something that you wrote?
SPEAKER_02Oh my uh crawfish is uh uh not something that I typically ever recommend. Uh there's crawfish, depending on where you buy them and what you get, there's lots of reasons you shouldn't stock crawfish. Uh the crawfish you can buy or Louisiana reds that that while they're tasty and delicious, they're it it it's like stocking an exotic species in in your favorite lake in hopes that they're going to take over, and that's that's not good for the native crawfish that live there. And that's one good re that that's a reason enough to never stock them in my book. Uh it's also, I think, pretty short-sighted. Uh folks think that crawfish are highly prized food items, bass. And the reason they think that, I believe, is because they see the remains of crawfish in the stomachs of the bass they catch. And the reason they see the remains of the crawfish in the stomach of the bass they catch is because the crawfish remains don't digest. They're it's like a rock.
SPEAKER_00Right, yeah. It makes a lot of sense.
SPEAKER_02And and it it wasn't he didn't eat that crawfish because he liked it, he ate it because it was there. And you think he did it a lot because he then carries around the remains of that crawfish for a week or two. Um they're not highly prized by fish, and you're buying them by the pound. Four dollars a pound, probably. And think about a crawfish. You most of the weight is in the shell. Yeah. So you're you're buying you're spending four dollars a pound to buy something that's of no benefit to your fish whatsoever.
SPEAKER_00Okay. We'll see what it is. I mean, what I hear him telling us from a broader standpoint is just kind of like the deer thing, is like with all the people trying to sell a gimmick that'll make them throw off two more G2s and all this stuff, the basics. We all know that from listening to a lot of smart biologists. And he's telling us the same thing with bass. Don't be looking for some magic bean. You've got to do the basics right, or you're just wasting your money. Yeah. Lowest holes in the bucket first. And then, you know, maybe there are some things, but if you don't stick to the basics, there's not like an extra magic bean there. I mean, sounds like to me, if you're gonna do something additional, it's not a magic bean, but the for me it seemed to be the most productive thing with the shad. Threadfin shed.
SPEAKER_02Do more of the same. Instead of spending your money on crawfish, spend it on something that does do some good. Like threadfin shad or bluegill or or any others. Uh rainbow trout are an excellent forage fish. Yeah. Uh in the wintertime. And and very popular with with uh they're they're just they're it's like they're made to be eaten by another fish.
SPEAKER_00Like an overgrown fathead minnow aren't they just a big thing? They are a lot.
SPEAKER_02And they're they're shaped like and they they act in ways that make them very vulnerable to bicep.
SPEAKER_00So that's the thing. I wish the shad you can't get the fatheads to survive because it's like they're the perfect fish. And you put them in a year ahead of time. It's just like they're just they're so slow and they don't even run from them when they eat them, they just devour them so quick, and they're nutrient dense is all good out, evidently, too. But you you know, I don't know if you can put enough cover in there for them to survive, can you?
SPEAKER_02Well, and that defeats the purpose of them being there.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I guess if you don't, you know, yeah.
SPEAKER_02I've seen folks commonly recommend cover so that fathead minnows or small bluegill can hide and not get eaten. Well then they're not gonna get eaten. They're not gonna get eaten. That's not the point.
SPEAKER_00So one last thing I got to actually do something I can't avoid. But I do remember him also to always telling me, you know, he was talking about maybe not even to the maybe the second year, but then the third year before you get really, really serious about harvesting the like whatever 12-inch and under, whatever you tell us to do, 12-inch, 14-inch and under. But he said, if you can kind of keep up with the size of the ones you first stocked, because those are gonna be the ones that have the best chance to get to maximum amount. He said, You put them in there, it's perfect. When they start, you put them in, they're just gorging yourself, plenty of food and everything. So he had always said to me, if you can kind of keep up with that and be sure you don't catch any of those, you know.
SPEAKER_02If you can, if you can.
SPEAKER_00And probably the females are the only thing you really keep up with the size, because as you subsequently you'll have a a male about the size of a female, you know.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, your males just sort of disappear in the population, but those big females from that first stocking always persist. The OG stocking. Yeah, and and I I call them eight-year geniuses, the the guys who did nothing right except stock it correctly.
SPEAKER_00Yep.
SPEAKER_02And if if they stocked it correctly and did everything else wrong, they're gonna have good fishing because of those big fish for about eight years. Wow. And that's good.
SPEAKER_00But I mean, I've been telling people all along, you you you're gonna be it's gonna year three will start to be unbelievable if we've done what you told them to. But that's also when you need to start seriously the management practice and listen to them, or else it won't last. And I didn't think it would last that long, but you know, the longer the longer it's unmanaged, the harder it's gonna be. It's kind of like cancer. The earlier you catch it, the easier it is to cure.
SPEAKER_02And and although fishermen won't notice the changes by year eight, uh uh uh scientists sampling population, right? We'll see the difference. We'll see the difference in three years. Uh he always said, you know, things going on.
SPEAKER_00If you're doing a census with the boat and they'd come in, but you know, you're better off to bring them in before, and then they can compare year over year, then you really start to get a picture.
SPEAKER_04So look, let's turn the page just a little bit. Let's learn a little bit about you. You're a heck of a fisherman. You travel all over chasing fish. I had the hardest time trying to get find some dates to get you in here. But tell us a little bit about you and you this what you're doing.
SPEAKER_02Well, I learned shortly after I retired that somehow I would was not fishing as much as I used to fish when I worked for DNR. And and I think that was because I wasn't regimented enough. And and and I learned in about three or four months that to correct that problem, what I did, I started scheduling about a week every month. That's when I go fishing. And I don't do my work then. I do my work before then and after then, but I I try to sit down, and so as a result, I'm looking for places to go every month of the year, somewhere. Uh, a lot of it is to South Louisiana where I'm catching redfish. Uh I really love fishing the southern part of Florida for the ever in the Everglades. I just got back from there catching tarpon and snook. Uh also enjoy fishing for peacock bass in the northern part of the Everglades. It's uh just a real Hoot. It's an easy trip to make and it's inexpensive. And gosh, you catch more fish there than I caught when I went to Brazil and fished. Smallmouth bass in places like Maine, Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, you've done a trip or two up there.
SPEAKER_04Well, I went a place he recommended. Okay.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, and and and it's it's it's hard to it's hard to beat smallmouth. I mean, smallmouth are a a real sporty fish. Uh I can understand why folks are so tempted to want them here. Uh that's not a good idea, but uh uh uh smallmouth are hard to beat. They sure are.
SPEAKER_04So I I'm I like that idea that you have of one week a month, I'm gonna go somewhere and just put it on the calendar.
SPEAKER_02Require it.
SPEAKER_04Yeah. I'm in on this. It's a pretty hey, can I take in three weeks? No. Can I take a week? No.
SPEAKER_05You've already used our year, okay.
SPEAKER_02What I what I what I found. What limits it is finding a partner to go with. I'm I'm the kind of guy who I enjoy fishing, but I enjoy fishing with somebody. I enjoy it most when somebody's with me. And uh uh it's hard to find folks who are who are frankly good enough fishermen and flexible enough in their travel schedule and physically capable enough to go. Uh I'm fast approaching, I think, that the time when I won't get to go, but uh a good partner is hard to come by. I'm accepting application.
SPEAKER_04I'd like to raise my hand. Yeah, I can. Yeah. You take two or three of us. So are you uh mostly fly fishing or exclusively fly fishing?
SPEAKER_02No, it's not exclusive. Uh I I mostly fly fish and have for 20 or more years, but I got started fly fishing for a very unusual reason. Uh I was typically fishing with my brother, and and he f uh reached a point in his fishing life where he was throwing popping bugs for largemouth bass on Lake Okeechobee, and I was fishing along behind him with a bait caster. And in the time it took me to make one cast and catch a fish and bring him in, get him off the hook, and be ready to cast again, he could catch two or three on a fly, on a popping bug. He just made much faster. So that's what stimulated me to start fly fishing. So it was a completely different kind of reason than most fishermen would have. Yeah, I wouldn't have thought about that. And some of the places we fish down in South Florida where uh uh the the the environment is just so rich in life. I mean, it's it's like fishing in fish soup. Uh you are only limited by your physical capacity to catch fish. The number of fish you catch is totally up to those physical constraints. It's pretty common to go down there and catch on popping bugs. If you're fit enough to do it, you catch two or three hundred fish a day. Uh I figured out the hard way, my capacity is about one every five or six minutes. If they're any more active than that, it wires me out. I gotta take a stop, take a nap.
SPEAKER_04So, what would you say is your favorite fish to chase?
SPEAKER_02It's really hard to say. I like I like them all. Uh and I I I could be content with any of the ones that I've mentioned already. Um I I I wouldn't I wouldn't pick one, but I'd be I wouldn't be hurting if you took one of them away from me either, though, because the others are just just as good. Yeah. What is it about fishing you think that you enjoy so much? I've never thought about that. That's a real good question. I don't know. Uh I did I I I learned early on that there's things I run across in life that I cannot explain to my satisfaction. And if I dwell on them, I still don't figure them out. I just occupies me and doesn't do good things for me. And that's one of those things. I I don't know why that is, and I ain't gonna worry about it. I'm just gonna succumb.
SPEAKER_03It uh, you know, the fact that you like so many different species of fish. Uh I think a lot of folks are like that. Nobody just likes to narrow it down.
SPEAKER_02I'm afraid my favorite is out there and I just ain't found it yet.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. That's right. Same with trees for me, you know. It's hard to pick one. Yeah. Yeah. How do you pick one?
SPEAKER_04You know, the interesting thing about fishing is so you you're they're most always in beautiful places and it's mo it's relaxing. But a lot of times you get to a you you've got a choice. You can keep that fish and maybe take them home and fry him up and feed your family, or you can release him. And I don't I don't there's I don't know, there's just it means there's so many, there's a choice there. Uh hunting a lot of times that once that's over with, there's only one outcome, and that deer's dead. Uh and then there's no rubbing on him and taking a picture and letting him get the you know, so it's just a little bit different like that. You well, Lanny, you're looking at me like I have lost my mind here. I'm trying to explain something.
SPEAKER_05Lanny likes to fillet and release. Yeah, I don't I didn't understand this throwing fish back concept that you were talking about.
SPEAKER_02Well, and one of the things else I've learned in my career, and and this is not relished by most biologists, I'd say, is that fishermen don't really pose the threat to fish that they think they do. Uh fish are pretty darn good at taking care of themselves. Uh you know, I've heard folks talk about how how what that what can we do in our pond so that the fish spawn better. Gosh, you don't need to do a thing. They're doing great like it is. The problem is they're doing it too much. Yeah, they're very fit. You know, fishermen are just not that big of a threat to fish, at least the fish that we typically are are talking about here in the south.
SPEAKER_04Can fish figure out a like if you've got a pond and you've a bunch of people going out there fishing it, the they've they kind of figure out what's going on there. I mean, you can train them not to bite, can't you?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, you can.
SPEAKER_04You can. And and do you have a rule of thumb for how much pressure a guy should go, how many times he should let somebody go fishing his lake? Is there a rule of thumb there?
SPEAKER_02No, there's there's not. Uh uh the smaller the lake, obviously the fewer the fish, and the more likely that is to occur and manifest itself. Uh that'd be a that I think a a a problem that would regulate itself. If if if fish get hard to catch, the fisherman's gonna quit fishing. And as he quits, the fishing's gonna rebound and and they're gonna get easier to catch again. So I don't think it's ever a permanent problem. It's a lot like other predators eating your fish. You know, uh I get calls all the time, folks are concerned that the turtles are eating all their fish, you know, and turtles, the ones that eat fish, don't eat that many fish. I mean, it's obvious the turtle, a big snapper turtle lived to be 150 years old. If he ate very many fish, he'd be as big as a house. Uh the cormorants, eagles, ospreys, uh, otters, they get blamed for eating lots of fish. They were probably not nearly as bad for the fish as we think they are. If I I when when a t somebody tells me they've got a problem like that, I think they're lucky that they've got so many fish that those critters want to come to their place to eat. Okay. You know, so it's a good way to look at it.
SPEAKER_04Yeah. Dudley, why don't you uh we should have done this at the beginning. I was just so excited to talk get to talking to him. Let's do the rapid fire.
SPEAKER_03All right. Well, um, I think we've answered a couple of the questions, but he can he can just re-answer them.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, so Les, we uh he's gonna ask you some questions. It's brought to you by we've got some friends or partners at uh the uh Nutrium Ag.
SPEAKER_03That's right, Nutrient Ag Solutions. Um all right, Les. So I don't know if you've heard this, uh, but I I'm gonna ask you about a 10 to a dozen questions, kind of in a rapid fire sequence. Lots of yes, no, maybe. Uh don't spend 10 minutes answering the question. Okay.
SPEAKER_02Try my best. All right.
SPEAKER_03So if I lapse into some sort of coma, you're like, Well, I got a cow horn. I'll hit it real hard. Okay. Are you ready?
SPEAKER_02Yes.
SPEAKER_03All right. Furthest north you've ever caught a fish? Canada. How do you like your coffee? No coffee. No coffee. Name your favorite freshwater fish to eat. Walleye. What about salt water inshore? Speckled trout. What about offshore? Swordfish. Ooh, that's good. Have you ever flown a kite to catch a fish? No, sir. What is your go-to fishing snack? Jack Slinks? Hey. You like boiled peanuts? Yeah, I'm not when I'm fishing. They got to tie up my fingers and I can't fish. Get it. Has anyone in your family ever had a tick-borne illness? No. Uh can you taste the difference between a hatchery fish and a uh fish that hatched in the in the lake? Oh, yes. Okay. Um have you ever seen or heard of a world record largemouth in the southeast from a shock survey? No. Um and are you telling the truth? We're gonna have to, yeah. Uh, and last but not least, you can only have one knot to tie on a hook for the rest of your life. What knot is that? Uh a clinch knot. A clinch knot. Yeah. Okay. All right. Good chance.
SPEAKER_02It's the only knot I can tie with my with my eyesight deteriorating on.
SPEAKER_04Okay. Perfect. I saw him cross his legs when you asked that question about a world record pass. I'm just thinking there.
SPEAKER_03Did he look down at the ground?
SPEAKER_04Yeah, I was looking right at him. He squinted his eyes, he crossed his ankles. We may have to bring a polygraph in here. All right. Richie, we've got a uh unless we've got a trivia question specifically just for you. Trivia is brought to you by our friends at the Peanut Patch. I understand you do like boiled peanuts.
SPEAKER_02We love boiled peanuts.
SPEAKER_04We love boiled peanuts.
SPEAKER_02We do love boiled peanuts. Peanut patch is going to be my next stop.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. Jack Lynx is great too. Yeah.
SPEAKER_07All right, here. So our uh listener who left a review and is our winner today is Goodbye Dudley.
SPEAKER_03What? Oh, that's interesting. That's somebody's name, huh? That's their handle.
SPEAKER_07Yeah. Uh was it a good review? Theoretically, you know.
SPEAKER_03Oh, you think Bobby might have made that up? I didn't feel good about myself.
SPEAKER_07I don't want Bobby pulled that.
SPEAKER_04I don't have time to do all that, Dudley.
SPEAKER_07Oh no, they left a good review. You know, I absolutely love the podcast. Uh, thank you for helping me learn so much about gamekeeping.
SPEAKER_05Oh, wow.
SPEAKER_04Good to do.
SPEAKER_07And so uh they win a uh companion's t-shirt. Nice.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, those are great t-shirts. They have a pocket in them. I love a pocket and t shirt. Keep up with my glasses because if I lose my glasses, suddenly I cannot.
SPEAKER_05Oh, your pocket protector? Yeah. Or I thought you put your cigarettes in there. No, I've got it. Well, that's what they were originally for. Well, he's got his vape now, I guess.
SPEAKER_04I don't have a vape. Do you vape, bro? It's just glasses. Les this is a rough trip, right?
SPEAKER_07All right, so here we go, Mr. Les. Um, where is fly fishing thought to have originated? Wow. Uh England.
SPEAKER_04Well, it's pretty close. Pretty close. That's where I would have thought, but when we googled this through the magic of the uh the internet, yeah, it said something different.
SPEAKER_07Uh so fly fishing is thought to have originated in ancient Macedonia.
SPEAKER_05Uh that's Europe, isn't it? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_07I mean, yeah, yeah, yeah. I guess so. You know, so specifically a Roman art author named Claudius Elenus.
SPEAKER_05Fly fisherman, yes.
SPEAKER_07Yeah, described Macedonians using a form of fly fishing on the Astris River using a red wool and feathers to imitate flies. Now, can you is it did Google tell you this?
SPEAKER_05Yeah, well, Wikipedia or something like that. Wikipedia told you this. Okay. So you could be wrong. Yeah, I think he's right. I think he should ring the bell.
SPEAKER_04But it's interesting. Macedonia. Macedonia. That that uh Richie lives in Caledonia.
SPEAKER_07Well, there is Macedonia. There's a Macedonia here. Right down the road in Sugarlock. Yeah, uh, we go to Macedonia Church. No, you got down there.
SPEAKER_02You know, fly fishing is just souped up cane pole fishing.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, it really is.
SPEAKER_02It really is.
SPEAKER_04Yeah. So I'll tell let me tell this. So through Barry, I met a guy that it was a smallmouth guy in Minnesota named Kip Vief. Great guy, really a lot of fun. But he they're they're really into these leaders and knowing what size leader, what pound leader, and all this. And he said, Oh my goodness, when Barry and Les come up there, they taught me they take a 40 down to a 20, I think was what he said. And he said, That's just that's what they use. They never break off a fish, they don't worry about all the little intricate little details. But Les and Barry had just said, guys, it's so simple. Just do this and it works. And I'm I'm told you were the guy behind all that.
SPEAKER_02Well, and it's for it's for the guide's benefit. When you get hung up, if you've got a light leader on there, it's gonna snap. It's gonna well, you're either gonna break it off or you gotta go get it. But if you've got a heavy enough leader, all you have to do is just keep pulling. And sooner or later something's gonna give and and you save the guide having to go get it. Uh and those folks l sometimes scoff at you for using a 20-pound leader to catch a two-pound smallmouth. Well, you can pretend it's a small leader if you want to, you know, until until it gets hung up, and then you can pretend it's a big leader. There you go.
SPEAKER_03It's all about efficiency.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, it is.
SPEAKER_04Well, this same guy says that that man right there is the best with a fly rod he's ever seen. Nice. Laying a bug right where it needs to be. Yeah, study's really good. So, how do you get do you practice? Uh well, you fish once a month. I get that. But are it it where did the uh proficiency come from?
SPEAKER_02There there your proficiency of of my foot fishing skills are greatly exaggerated. Uh and I'd question your source.
SPEAKER_03So you you kind of learn by doing. I do. I mean, you're from the south.
SPEAKER_02And and I've never had an instructor, and it shows. And and commonly I get in the boat with somebody and and I I mean it it it embarrasses me to see them cast so much better than I do. Although, in my defense, I will say it's pretty rare that even though they cast better than me, that they can catch any more than I do.
SPEAKER_05That's what's important.
SPEAKER_02Because I work at it a lot harder. I take it I take it maybe too seriously sometimes and and uh uh uh but I'm I'm not a great caster and and never have been and and never will be. I'm I'm too old now, I I think too old to change. Uh when I learned to fly fish, uh it was really just souped up cane pole fish.
SPEAKER_03If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
SPEAKER_04Yeah. Yeah well Les Ager, we have enjoyed this. Yeah, we've thank you for being here. We really have. You're a a a one of what how do you say that where it's like an old soul that's the the the ways that they that they're they're rooted in the traditions and the old school ways, and I that's what I feel about you.
SPEAKER_02An albatross, I think is that. Well, I'm trying to I'm trying to say that in when in a complimentary way. I I appreciate it. Uh it's it's it's it's it's been fun to be here in the center of the Mossy Oak world and the gamekeeper world. Uh y'all do some really interesting stuff and and uh I can see why you're so successful. It's the passion y'all generate is is very obvious. I enjoyed it. Well, thank you, sir.
SPEAKER_04You know, we don't get a lot of compliments. No, we don't. That's it's nice to get one from time to time. Well, uh we'll have to do this again.
SPEAKER_02And and a shout out to while I've got a chance to my wife. Yes, sir. My wife, JD, who doesn't get to fish with me as much as she used to, uh uh for for helping me be successful at this stuff.
SPEAKER_05Hey, hit the horns on that, Richie.
SPEAKER_04Wives are so exp uh so important. How long have y'all been married?
SPEAKER_02Oh Lord, uh since 1982. Uh it's been a it's been a wild ride. She used to she used to fish just as much as I did. Wow. Uh and and her interests have changed over the years. Mine have sort of been intransient.
SPEAKER_04So you got any uh marriage advice for any people listening?
SPEAKER_02Uh go fishing more.
SPEAKER_04There you go. Go fishing more. The guy we had some got some coon hunters here the other night. I thought I thought it was pretty interesting. He said, Honey, I'll be home when the doorknob turns. I'd never heard that one. I couldn't get away with that.
SPEAKER_03I don't know if I'm ever gonna try that one.
SPEAKER_04All right, Mr. Les, we've enjoyed having you. Thank you all. You traveled all the way here from did we put you up in a nice hotel or do we Richie, did we book a dump or what we well I I believe you booked the hotel there, Bobby.
SPEAKER_02Would you enjoy your stay? It was a wonderful Hampton Inn that you ensconced me in. There we go.
SPEAKER_03How was the continental breakfast?
SPEAKER_02Uh about as good as you can get. This side of Alabama, I think.
SPEAKER_03I always like it when they have those little mini sausages out. Those things are so good. And the the white gravy is usually good at the Hampton Ends. The gravy is what's good. You're right. How about that?
SPEAKER_04Can we go eat? Yeah, we can. It's been fun. Thank you so much. So let's just wrap this thing up. Why don't you say goodbye, Dudley? Goodbye, Dudley.
SPEAKER_05Get us out of here, Richie.
SPEAKER_01Thanks 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 Mafio Properties Fitz Full of Dirt podcast with my good buddy, Ronnie Guster.