All right. Welcome to Serious Angler Podcast and welcome back to another segment of The Real Biology. We're back with the man, Mr. Steve Barden. And as always, I'm your host, Bailey Eichbridge and Steve. We've both been traveling like mad, but dude, you have been I I've been traveling nationally. You've been you've been global, my friend.
SPEAKER_01No, not global. I mean, I didn't leave North America.
SPEAKER_00Um, I mean you've been naturally sound either. I this is why I fish, dude. I don't have the brains. But either way, you've been out of the lower 48 anyway.
SPEAKER_01Correct. Correct. You have you have that. You have that. Correct.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_01So I um I'm gonna be I'm gonna be blowing your phone up with these pictures shortly. All right. Uh Casey and I got to take our first trip to Puerto Rico. Um we did a little diving, nothing cool there. I mean, I did see uh a pretty sweet barracuda. I watched a guy do some spear fishing, so I'm on the bottom watching him spearfish, and that that's always fun. Uh, but we went peacock bass fishing, and it it was a cool experience. We had a great guide. There's only really one, there's one or two like inland guides in Puerto Rico, and um we met him uh at a little bakery in the morning, 4 a.m. Meet you at the bakery, uh, drive over to the lake, and we fished a half day with him. Um the lake is like center of the island, and they had stocked Florida bass in it, and it was like the number one of the number one tournament bass lakes on Puerto Rico. And then Puerto Rico brought in uh the butterfly peacock, and they were looking for fish that you know is just easy to manage, very hardy. They put in the the butterfly peacock, and it like some of the stories we talk about of invasive species, it has completely changed that fishery to where now they don't they don't like they still do tournaments, but now in a bass tournament, you you weigh largemouth or peacock, and he's like, it's like every three to five months that somebody weighs a largemouth. And so a lot of them are just weighing the peacocks um as their bag. It is weird how they do their tournaments. Um, I was, you know, of course, I'm just chatting with them the whole time, uh, but how they do their tournaments, you and I would go out and fish, and let's say the krills ate fish. So we go out and fish, and if I catch eight fish, the DNR is floating on the water somewhere. So the second my eighth fish hits the live well, I have to drive and go find the DNR, and I weigh my eight fish, and then I can release them and start over. And you can weigh as many fish as you can catch during the event, but you weigh them eight fish at a time.
SPEAKER_00So it's kind of like a hybrid between live well and MLF format.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, like you're live welling, but you're live welling your eight. And you know, you may, I mean, you may weigh 24 fish, and I only weigh eight, or vice versa. Like it's crazy. Yeah, he said that uh it's a very different format, but not many, not many largemouth of Florida bass are weighed anymore. It's it's all these peacocks. And Casey and I caught fish. Um, he didn't have a scale uh on the boat, but you know, I would say we caught fish that ranged from a pound and a half up to four and a half pounds, maybe five. How are we calling it? I'm being generous. Uh spinnerbait, double willow spinnerbait. Yeah, um, all on spinning reels. He didn't have maybe he owned one bait caster, um, but he had probably like eight rods total, um, braid, and he owned six spinnerbaits. And he was like, he was like telling me how like on the island, like he's got like some of the best tackle. He used to be uh in Florida, came back to Puerto Rico, and he's like, Man, I like I got like six or eight spinnerbaits. And uh when you would when you'd hook a peacock, the guy because we were using spinnerbaits, would want you to just keep the keep the rod down, don't let the fish jump, because of course they like to jump. And when they start jumping, they will bend a wire bad. And so he's like, if we break a spinnerbait, like we don't have many backups, and they're like they're like the light wire spinnerbaits, like we're throwing uh you know, uh like three-eighth ounce spinnerbaits, and just not super long cast, but cast to the bank. There's like a small grass line, and of course, they have like uh giant Sylvania, um a little bit of hydrilla, so we're just casting, and then they they would hit moderate, you know, not super aggressive, they're butterflies, so they're not super aggressive. Um, and then they would just try to bulldog you down. But I'll I'll send you some pictures of some good ones we caught. Yeah, I say four and a half, five pounds is like the biggest. Of course, he's like, that's a seven. That's you know, he's like trying to hype up. I'm like, dude, you don't have to pretend with me, it's cool. Like we also caught jaguar fish, which uh I would say Casey and I both thought the jaguar fish were a little bit cooler than the peacocks. I don't know what that is. I'm gonna look that up. I'll send you a picture. Um, a jaguar fish looks like a very muscular, aggressive crappie.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Teeth. And uh man, when they would hit a spinnerbait, they wanted to kill it. And then I also caught a I caught a red devil, um, and Casey caught a firemouth. And so we just, you know, we we caught a lot of different fish. Uh, she caught a couple on top water. One of the things I thought was hilarious, um, he had one chatterbait. And I was like, the whole time I'm casting the spinnerbait, I'm like, if this dude just owned chatterbaits, we would be wrecking them. Like we would catch 200. And uh, so finally I was like, hey man, you got a bladed jig? And he's like, I got one, but you won't catch anything. And I threw that bait for 45 minutes. Perfect technique, and I did not get a bite. He's like, Yeah, they don't they don't like them, they don't like them, and they don't have a ton of grass, so I don't I don't think that helps. Like most of their grass is emergent. Um, so you know, you don't really have a grass bed you're fishing. A lot of the bites would come as you pass like a log or something like that. So, of course, a spinnerbait would be more traditional bait, anyways. Um, yeah, but I felt bad. I I got his address because I was like, when I get back to the States, I'm gonna send you the biggest box of spinnerbaits. You were gonna be a spinnerbait dealer, he's gonna win every tournament for the rest of the year. Yeah, it was it was awesome. Uh, great experience. Um, Puerto Rico's cool. Then we got back home, um spent a week just you know, bulldozing through work, trying to get caught up. Uh, we took another quick trip to Georgia. Casey had a horse competition that went wonderful. And now this week is our kids' camp. You remember last year we did a show from kids' camp with Cynthia Fox.
SPEAKER_00We just uh reposted that episode from last year again, just because it had so much good info in it.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, perfect. So that camp's going on right now. I took a short break from camp to come and do this interview. Uh, a lot of our past guests, Michael Homer, TJ Pullen, uh, of course, Kenyon and Tommy, like they're everybody's there. Um, camp is going great. Another great group of kids, uh, Texas Parks and Wildlife, and uh the Trinity River Water Authority District, and of course, my company, Texas Pro Lake. Uh, we all showed up and we're having a great time. Gary Klein is there today. They're they're getting on his boat, and the past two years, he's insured that every kid caught a fish off of his boat. So he's he's on a two-year, two-year run of that. So he wants to to keep that going today. I'm sure he's already done. Uh, because worst case scenario, he grabs a drop shot, turns a forward facing on, is like, here, here they are. But yeah, yeah. And then tonight, uh, the kids will compete in a tournament. Uh, they're teams of six and they'll compete. So four teams of six, and then Gary by himself, and they'll compete in a tournament and see who wins. Um, heck yeah. Yeah, it's that's cool. It just depends on if uh if he's feeling competitive or not. Um, there's been years where you know a kid is is doing enough trash talking that he's like, fine, I'm gonna try. Good luck.
SPEAKER_00I would not want to go up against Gary.
SPEAKER_01Well, the weird thing is I've I've been doing this camp for 14 years. And in the beginning, uh, we really didn't incorporate a lot of fishing. It was more the science. And over time, we've incorporated more and more fishing. Started letting the kids bring their own gear, started providing more gear. Uh, you know, we have a lot of camp tackle this year. I donated a bunch of tackle from Sixth Cents, and so all the kids are gonna leave with, you know, a couple hundred bucks worth of six cents gear. Um, but the kids now that are coming are not just science kids, there's a lot of bass fishermen. Uh, so I teach, I taught yesterday at like a flipping and pitching course, and we do like a flipping and pitching competition tomorrow. So I'm like giving them some tips, and there's half the people there are like, dude, I've I've been pitching, I can throw it under this dock and yada yada, and you know, before the majority of the kids wouldn't even know what a bait cast reel was, and so now like they're very skilled, uh, which is fun. That's a new dynamic for us that we actually have true fishermen coming. Um, and I get to humble them and show them. I I aged myself yesterday. Um, I we're you know, we're just practicing in like coffee cans, uh, you know, pitching, flipping in coffee cans, and like I'm showing the kids technique and giving them uh pointers, and somebody's like, Wow, how do you get good at this? I was like, you just do it. This is what we used to do before we had cell phones, we'd stand in the backyard and flip and pitch all day. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Um, or we just used a jig. But um but yeah, immediately when I said that, like two of the other instructors looked at me like I was nuts, and I was like, Yeah, yeah, didn't y'all do that? And they're like, No, we we didn't.
SPEAKER_00Dang.
SPEAKER_01I know it's crazy to be the old man there now.
SPEAKER_00It's it's cool that because then what you're seeing is an evolution of fisheries, future fisheries biologists that are not just gung-ho on the science, not just gung ho on the fishing, but both.
SPEAKER_01And I feel like that's what we want. All right, well, I think our audience sees that with a lot of our guests. Um you know, you think about like Jake Norman, uh, tournament bass fisherman, Preston Tournament Bass Fisherman. Uh, you know, we we did the long interview with Jeremy Reese uh from Arkansas about their program, and we really need to have Jeremy back on and talk about the success of this year. But um, I mean, Jeremy could have easily been an FLW or Bassmaster pro. I mean, he was he is that good of a stick. Um local Arkansas Angler, sponsored by Skeeter for a long time. Like he was he's really good. And I think Arkansas's lucky to have a guy like that leading their black bass program. Um, you know, Texas used to have the same thing in Todd Driscoll, just the guys that and gals that really just love fishing do make the best biologist because of course they want to get out and do it. Um, and then on the technical side, um I think that anglers inherently pay attention to different things on the water. That, you know, it's not something that's in a textbook, but whenever you combine it with what's in a textbook, it makes really good science.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. One thing I've uh I've meant to actually go and text Jeremy is we've had two pretty major names in bass fishing because of those shows. Go and visit Arkansas and fish because of that conversation.
SPEAKER_01I love that. Yeah, you need to share those stories with him. Um I think Arkansas is one of those up-and-coming states. Of course, we had Jason on uh from Tennessee. I think Tennessee just keeps putting effort into the to their program. Yeah, uh, Oklahoma, um, they're really polishing up on their programs as well. There's there's a lot of states that are getting into the understanding that we have to do more to build trophy fisheries, protect our fishery from Alabama bass, start providing more tournament access. And that doesn't just mean really great boat ramps with with great weigh-in facilities, that also means kayak launches, dedicated facilities for you guys that are competing from those smaller bodies or smaller uh watercraft. And and we're seeing it.
SPEAKER_02We're seeing all the investments.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah, yeah. I at a lot of the conferences now I see um these ideas of like these, you know, more like a fishing jetty, like you'd have coastal. Yeah, I see a lot of a lot of designs coming out on how do we build a fishing jetty at this reservoir or that reservoir to give shoreline anglers deep water access.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, because that's great for the bank anglers. And if the bank anglers aren't there, it's great for us that are out there fishing boats or kayaks because as we know, riprap is always a good sign.
SPEAKER_01Exactly. And that's how they're gonna armor it, you know, with riprap. And so, you know, you get half a mile of riprap uh onto a point and then half a mile back. That's a that's a great yeah, that's awesome.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I love that. We need some more of that in our lakes. We don't have we have like two lakes that have like 10 yards of rip rap, uh, which is great in the springtime. But um we we have a a fun little show for the folks. It's gonna be a quicker show today, but uh we got some QA's from the fans to you, Steve. Um so if you're ready, we'll we'll start rifling through these. Unless we got more stories. I know you went to Alaska too. Do we have any quick stories from that?
SPEAKER_01No, no. I'll I'll save my Alaska stories, but also we do owe you a congratulations. You didn't you didn't win in California, but you you put the points up, right?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, we we there's only 76 anglers in it. Uh but we got eighth place out of all the handlers out in the west. So I now I was very happy with it. I was one of two guys without scope out there, so we'll take the boomer win. Um but uh it was it was good. The guy that won, Matthew Brandon, is a hell of a stick, and uh he had over 36 pounds, I think, on day two, which is just insane, especially like with the kayak and how much ground from what I've gathered on Clear Lake that you need to usually cover to catch a bag of that size. Um the dude put a lot of work in. Um, and some really good dudes that I've met from out west uh had a great event, and it was dude, it's just awesome being on that community. That community is so cool. Everyone was furthest west you've been. That yeah, that's the the furthest west prior to that was down Pedro, so maybe like a two hours more west of that. But yeah, um furthest west I've ever fished and obviously competed. So um you already had so what you'll do pounds not inches. We did we did inches. Um so he had 108 on day two, which is that seems like a lot. It that is a lot. That is a lot, a lot. Uh the biggest I've ever seen is 114, and of course that was that was Texas.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and how many fish are in your bag?
SPEAKER_00Five.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, that's a good pretty good bag.
SPEAKER_00I think the biggest of the event was a 23 and a quarter, which was just a hair under 10 pounds.
SPEAKER_01Oh, yeah, yeah, they're super fun.
SPEAKER_00And the old quake ball of all things, but amazing, yeah.
SPEAKER_01Um, I got something I want to show you. Yeah, I know that you want to do a QA show. I know, but I haven't seen you in a little bit, and I have something I want to show you. And you're just gonna have to pause for 10 seconds.
SPEAKER_00That's fine. I'll I like to I like when shows get derailed. I'll be back. All right, I'll I'll fill the air. Uh we we did have a couple questions we will ask Steve. We'll make sure we get them in there because we put it up on social for you guys of hey, ask a fisheries biologist this question. And we any question you guys have, we've tried to get on every single one that you guys have submitted. So for people listening, if you're listening on Spotify, drop a comment in the shows. Uh oh, here we go. We got the belt coming out. But to finish that thought, if you're on YouTube or socials, send us a DM and email comment with a question, and we'll feature it on the next QA's. But what is this are those are crappies? Pro Leg Real Biology Challenge Champion. Is this for the camp this week?
SPEAKER_01Look, look, so here's the deal tomorrow at camp. I'm just gonna wear this for a minute. Tomorrow at camp. How do you how do you do this? Tomorrow at camp, uh, one of my biologists won the first annual, not annual, first monthly challenge while I was gone. So when I was in Alaska, I got this crazy idea, like most would. And I got online and I I built this and I texted my entire Texas Pro Lake team. And I was like, listen, it's June 1st. Um, we're gonna do a competition and we're gonna see which one of you can catch the most species of fish from our clients' lakes this month. And uh they didn't know what they were competing for. So I got this shipped in. So they're competing, and uh, we have a winner, and it's gonna be Gary Klein's daughter, Kenyan Klein, of course. A Klein won it. Uh, so she won, so she'll get her her belt tomorrow.
SPEAKER_00We need we need a picture of her wearing that.
SPEAKER_01She's so embarrassed. Bro, oh come on. No, they can get belt buckles the size of your truck in Texas. That's amazing, dude. That's her that's her belt. Sorry, I hit the mic. Uh, that's her belt. She's gonna get that tomorrow. Um I just thought I should show you that. Um you you love trophies. Uh so they're already started their next month challenge. So who whoever wins, if it's canyon again, she keeps the belt. If not, somebody's taking it from her. Um, and she is not leading this one. One of my young, one of my young college kids is actually leading this month with uh this month you score points for culling fish every day. And uh he's he's wiping the floor with her.
SPEAKER_00So do well, you should what would be cool if you did uh is start a tradition there is each winter you have them sign their name on the back of it.
SPEAKER_01Um so I asked her if she would I asked her if she would ask her dad what marker is best for this because I thought who would who would know? King of autographs, yeah. We get the autograph champion to tell us so that we can write it in. And then uh I did buy your the reason I remembered this is because your uh your koiky comment. So I did buy uh enough koikis for my entire staff, and I did them in three different size or two different sizes and a couple different colors, and next month I'm gonna provide them those baits, and you can only it's who can catch the most fish on them.
SPEAKER_00You you know you're about to get your phone number passed on to somebody, you're gonna get DMs of people trying to buy those off you. You probably can make some serious money off those next show. You're gonna be like, Yeah, we changed, we changed the challenge.
SPEAKER_01We changed it, we're doing spinnerbaits, double WL spinnerbaits, just whatever. They're 99 cents at Walmart.
SPEAKER_00How to make a quick buck on some koikies.
SPEAKER_01We gotta pay for this build.
SPEAKER_00That's right. Yeah, that's so cool, dude. That's that's awesome.
SPEAKER_01I thought you'd enjoy that. All right, good to your questions.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_00Derailed it. That was a great derail. Um, okay, so the first one is one that's actually for me. I'm gonna be selfish here and go first. Um so my buddy and I that fish heavily here in New York. There's two fisheries that we love, and a lot of people know them. I'll call them out by name because I want this, because I know we're not the only ones that think about this. Uh it's lakes called Hemlock and Canadice. They're the two lakes that are water source for the city of Rochester, New York. Okay. Um, they're part of the finger lakes. They're the two lakes that um they are, I think it's 99 horsepower or lower. You can get a bass boat out there with towing motor only, but it has to be under 17 foot, which is why it's a great spot for us kayak guys. Um because you don't have the boating pressure, there's no docks in the lake, no one can live on it. One of the so the hemlock is probably twice as long as Canadace has a great population of both largemouth and smallmouth. Okay, the same species of fish that are in hemlock are in Canadise, but for some reason, the fish in Canada, especially the smallmouth, are built like Great Lakes smallmouth, where hemlock smallmouth are like built like river fish. Very like long. Longer and slender, whereas the candidized ones are thick as all get out. What could be a possibility for causing that? Because we always catch much bigger fish in cannadized than hemlock.
SPEAKER_01All right. So we'll ask environmental questions first. Okay. You said one is basically twice as long as the other. What about depth profile? Do we have any change in depth? Very similar depth. Okay, good. Um vegetation type. Do we have differences in vegetation?
SPEAKER_00I guess to to make this even easier, I should have mentioned this. If you look at both lakes, banks, topograph uh topography, uh vegetation, laydowns, all that, it looks like a carbon copy. It's just half the size.
SPEAKER_01Water clarity is the same thing.
SPEAKER_00Correct.
SPEAKER_01Okay. And neither one of them have zebra muscles. Not to my knowledge. Okay. Um so in my gut, um I was thinking there must be a temperature difference. Just because the size of the water body is different, so it's gonna heat and cool slightly different. Um, but I expected also that maybe there would be an environmental difference, like a color or clarity difference. There isn't. So you they are the same species, um they're eating the same food. So now you would think about pressure. So I go a little bit away from environmental and more to a human condition, so pressure, harvest. Um, because basically what you have described is one set of fish are shorter and plumper than the other set that's more elongated. And the shape of the fish is either dictated by environment, um, because those longer fish usually are in environments with higher current, um, maybe lower productivity. So it takes longer to grow to um that length, and they don't put on weight as quickly. And so that fish at the same length is going to be skinnier, but also older, like a year or two older, where the short plump fish are traditionally in systems with lower current, lower flow, higher productivity, and therefore faster growth rate. Growth can also be dictated by things like temperature. Um, it could be that if we look back in the historical record uh in the not too distant past, that we had an environmental challenge in one of those fisheries where we lost several generations of fish, like we had a fish kill. Um, it could be that we have a recruitment issue. So in one of those fisheries, the one with the plumper fish, maybe what we have is either a higher recruitment or a lower recruitment. A higher recruitment would mean that the smallmouth would have more technically forage available as juvenile fish. They could eat the other smallmouth, but a lower recruitment would result in a smaller population, which should equal faster growth. The hard part is Bailey, uh, without doing like a traditional survey and looking at like a snapshot of what does the food chain look like and what do the bass actually look like and pulling the odolith. Uh, odolith is a small bone inside the fish's head that has growth rings on it, it's where we could age them. Without doing some of that technical science, we are just guessing here. Uh, we're guessing at why do these fish look different. But in my gut, it if it's not environmental, it has to be a human condition due to harvest or population manipulation of some sort.
SPEAKER_00Okay. I definitely think Hamlock gets a lot more fishing pressure on it. Uh both lakes get hit pretty hard by the Amish. And as you know, those are uh everything that swims goes in the cooler. Um the only theory, and you could and I'm only saying this because I would love for you to either if that has any grain of salt to it, or if I this is a dumb idea, but Canada's being as small as it is compared to hemlock, there's less distance these fish have to travel to run into food. Whereas hemlock, they have to travel a lot farther to run into forage.
SPEAKER_01So hemlock is the one where they're longer and skinnier.
SPEAKER_00Correct. And it's the longer lake.
SPEAKER_01So they're more nomadic. Um that I mean, yeah, theoretically, that works. That goes back to more of a river-based system where the fish having to move in current more. Um that's that is traditionally why some smallmouth are short and fat, and others are long and skinny. Um, I'm I'm fine with that answer. It's not definitive, it is anecdotal, but it fits. Um the smaller one. See, the smaller one should have a lower carrying capacity, right? Um, it should be able to support less pounds of fish. If all things are the same, the larger one should support more pounds of fish. If watercolor clarity is the same, forage availability is the exact same, the larger one's just going to support more pounds of fish because of its size. Right. But if you take um any water quality parameter and make that the limiting factor, like dissolved oxygen, you could then say if one of them has a lower dissolved oxygen that manipulates carrying capacity. So pounds per acre would go down on the one with lower dissolved oxygen. Um, you could you could change that parameter to temperature, and you have an optimum growth range for smallmouth bass. And I'm gonna I'm gonna throw out 55 to 75 degrees, maybe 70 degrees, like that's their optimum growth range. So the more days that each one of those has in that window, the faster those smallmouth are gonna grow. So the smaller one in this case may have a faster warm-up in the spring that could speed everything up. They may spawn two weeks faster. Their forage that is available may spawn two weeks faster, that gives them an advantage. But also in the winter, um, it it maybe doesn't have the ability to hold that temperature as long. So maybe their season ends a little bit earlier. Once again, these are all anecdotal things, but these are the ways that that I would start to assess the fishery and try to figure those things out.
SPEAKER_00Okay, I like it. We will uh take notes of that and go explore a little bit deeper into the fishery. Yeah, there you go. Um, we have a question here from Brad uh Luchow. Sorry if I butchered that last name on Instagram asking, he wants to talk about lead poisoning. He said, can lead fishing weights be toxic problems in the fisheries?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, that's that is a highly debated topic, Brad. Great question. One that I don't spend a ton of time on. Um, you know, the ASA, uh, the American Sport Fishing Association, um, they do periodically publish information about fishing tackle and its lead contribution. And and really the majority of the issues that we've ran into as like an industry with tackle and potential tackle bands have come from the potential of lead being discarded and then accumulating into a fish and then accumulating into a top predator more like an eagle. And so we we every once in a while, the fishing industry will have some environmental group try to bring that uh to the table. And the scientific community has always shown that there's not enough lead accumulation to trickle up the system that way from tackle. I I don't factually study that, so I can't say that to be the actual truth, but that is uh from from what I have understood from organizations like ASA and American Fisheries Society, like we don't have a body of evidence that shows direct correlation from your lead sinker and it working through uh the environment, through an insect or fish host, and then into some sort of uh apex predator. We don't have that direct connection right now. Uh so at this point, I think the fishing industry is pretty solid on the fact that that doesn't occur because we're not discarding um gear uh in in a rate that that it is an environmental problem.
SPEAKER_00Okay, I like that. Um next one we have is from Kayke Fishing as well on Instagram. Kevin asks basically kind of long story short, he said there was a pond about one acre size that he's been at for 15 plus years uh over one winter uh this year. That there was a massive fish kill, nothing was known to survive, assuming because I haven't caught anything since. Okay. Um and essentially wants to turn this back into a fishable pond that's going to be uh for an Airbnb. Uh wants it to be fishable for bass and sunfish. So I'm assuming he's asking about the process of rebuilding that place.
SPEAKER_01Okay. Um did Kevin say where he where he's located? Uh Pennsylvania. Pennsylvania. Okay, yep. So the likely cause of fish kill could have been um almost all fish kills in ponds, like 99% are oxygen-related, dissolved oxygen related, and most of them occur during the summer and is due to a lack of oxygen. Every once in a while, um, during a really heavy ice out that has snow on top of the ice, um your lake is typically insulated. So the temperature stays warm and the fish don't freeze. But what can happen is there's no contact with the atmosphere. So the oxygen demand of that environment can get too high and cause a same low dissolved oxygen fish kill just because there's no sunlight, so you don't get phytoplankton producing oxygen, you have no atmosphere touch, so you're not getting wave or current uh, you know, to allow absorption of oxygen on the surface. So you get you get low dissolved oxygen. You there are also some winter um disease or syndromes, uh specifically like catfish, and even some trout species can have issues like that. Um, and then you can have some bacterial issues because your fish's metabolism slows down to basically a halt during the winter. Um, so they can even like catfishes can eat food and it can stay undigested in the stomach for several uh days to weeks, and and that can mold and cause some issues. So there's all kinds of little things that could happen in the winter. Yep. We'd say that if he's had this pond for 15 years and it's happened this one time, it is not something that I am overly concerned is going to replicate and happen again. If I were him, I would run a little bit of water quality, um, make sure that my nutrients are in balance. I have a good nitrogen to phosphorus ratio, I don't need to do anything to dry my phosphorus down. Um, most of the time, you wouldn't really, that doesn't change your fish stalking. That would be a secondary activity you're doing. I would check my pH and my alkalinity, make sure I have an alkalinity above 40. Um, alkalinity is the buffer for pH to swing throughout the day. I'd want my pH between six and a half and eight and a half. With that alkalinity above 40, it's not gonna manipulate a lot, and that's gonna allow for phytoplankton to grow and the food chain to start. Um, once I'm pretty certain of that, that's gonna, you know, depending on what it costs locally in Pennsylvania, that's gonna cost you, let's say, less than $50 to get a water quality ran. Okay. Once you have that information, then you need to go on to forage stocking. Um, forage stocking almost universally is gonna start with fathead minnows. Fathead minnows are a slow swimming, very small minnow. Um, it will reproduce several times a year. It sticks its eggs underneath things. So rocks, um even pallets, docks, it's gonna stick its eggs underneath things. And they're gonna just continually spawn, they'll build a nice little population, and once we put the bass in, they're gonna be the initial growth forage for bass. They're only gonna last in the fishery for a year or two until the bass completely deplete them, but that's where we start. Fathead minnows. Depending on who you buy your fish from, there are some that sell them by the thousands and some that sell them by the pounds. If I was going to make a recommendation, I would say somewhere between five and 10 pounds per acre. Sounded like he's right at an acre, so I would lean him towards 10 pounds. Um, if it was a trophy fishery, I would even push that to 20 pounds of fat head minnows. Depending on your cost, he may decide to do 20 pounds. Um outside of the fathead minnows, there's two other forage items that we use pretty frequently in just bass fisheries, and those are bluegill sunfish and red ear sunfish. Bluegill um are gonna have several reproductive attempts a year. In Pennsylvania, three to four. Um red ear are gonna have one reproductive attempt a year. The bluegill can grow at a pretty fast rate because they reproduce pretty frequently. They create the base of the long-term food chain for the bass. And then the red ear, uh, they consume snails, and a lot of our parasites on our fish come from snails. And so stocking the red ear allows for us to have a parasite control in the beginning. The red ear and the bluegill, uh, because they have some reproductive differences, means that long term red ear will become less abundant and must be restocked. So I would say every three to five years, you're going to add a few more red ear. Um, the formula for how to stock your bluegill and how to stock your red ear is is difficult to understand at first, but in practice is fairly easy. In your lake, you want a ratio for every bass, you want 10 bluegill or 10 sunfish. So for me, what I would do is I would say I've got a one-acre lake. I'm gonna put a hundred bass in there eventually. So I need a thousand bluegill. You want your bluegill to red ear ratio to not start any less than four to one, four bluegill for every one red ear. If you want to create longevity in the system, you make it two to one. So if I do a thousand bluegill, I would like for him to do 500 bluegill or at a minimum 250. So he's gonna stock the fathead minnow, the bluegill sunfish, and the red ear into the pond. In Pennsylvania, you're gonna have a couple windows when you can do stocking. Um, one of those windows will probably start in August. So I would get it done. You will then let those fish spawn. The bluegill will spawn maybe once this fall, the fatted minnows will spawn two or three times this fall. Then you will let them spawn again in the spring, and you will stock your bass in May. So you're only giving yourself about six or eight months uh before you stock your bass. If it was a trophy fishery, I would push that to a year. But for I want to get the system going and I understand the restrictions of when fish are available in the northern climates, I'm gonna say stock them in May. It may be June before they're available locally, uh, but you're gonna stock your bass and you're gonna use a northern largemouth bass because that's what's gonna be available in Pennsylvania. Alternatively, if Kevin wanted to do is it was Kevin, right? Um if he wanted to do smallmouth bass, he could do so. They would most likely be feed trained. Um, whenever we build a smallmouth bass fishery, we also like to incorporate yellow perch. Um, and then if there are, depending on the state, there are some states that have limited restrictions on crayfish, and so you would stock crayfish as well. Okay, but start the forage, wait six months, add your bass.
SPEAKER_00Like it. There you go, Kevin, just in time for winter. I love it. Okay. Uh we'll add on that too. We got two left for you, and we'll wrap this sucker up. Um, mobile bass challenge, talking about uh ponds as well. I was asking about are there negative impacts of grass carp in in small ponds? And if so, is there a time you should know to eradicate them?
SPEAKER_01Okay, great question. Um every state has different rules on if you can have diploid or triploid grass carp. So, of course, diploid grass carp are just regular grass carp. They're a grass carp. We have males and females, and they can freely reproduce. They don't do so very efficiently in ponds because they need a lot of water current to tumble their eggs uh so that they can they can actually hatch. So they don't reproduce well in ponds, but many states, uh, he didn't say which one he's in. So many states are restricted to sterile fish that are triploids. Triploid means you have three sets of chromosomes and that you cannot reproduce. You still produce gametes, those gametes just don't match up, they're not viable. And so they could attempt to reproduce, it will never be effective. Those fish are tested by U.S. Fish and Wildlife before they leave a fish hatchery and enter into a state. Every state requires the whoever you're buying those, or whatever fish farm you're buying them from, requires testing. So if you're in a state with a triploid grass carp restriction, you know you're getting sterile fish. Now, those fish, once stocked into a pond, they eat approximately three, three times their body weight per day as young fish, and that declines over time as they grow. They're gonna grow, depending on where you are in the United States, somewhere between 20 and 40 pounds before they they they run into life. We used to say grass carp lives seven to ten years. I'm gonna push you to 10 to 12, maybe even 15 years. Um when a grass carp gets into the system, how they eat, they have no teeth. So they they grab vegetation, they pull it until it breaks, and in the back of their gill, they have modified gill plates that act as grinding mechanisms. So they grind the vegetation. There are certain plants, as you imagine this in your mind, that you could grab and pull and eat a lot easier than other plants. So if you think of like algae, algae would be hard to grab and pull and get a piece and then grind it up. If you think about a uh cactail, that would be hard to grab and pull and grind. But something like coontail may be really easy because you can grab a small piece, you can pull it off, and you can grind it easy. So they're gonna have preferred plants. As grass carp increase in density, which is controlled by your stocking, you are going to push them to consume first those preferred plants and then beyond those preferred plants into non-preferred plants. As we see that ratio increase, you're basically getting at some point to a threshold where eradication is going to occur. Plants are going to be completely eradicated. Uh, that's the hard part about grass carp, they're a great tool to control plants, but you can't control where and when they're going to be eating that plant. So if you use them, you usually are pushing for eradication. I would never recommend people to stock grass carp if they aren't concrete on the fact that they don't want plants. If you want any plant, grass carp may not be the solution for you because stocking at a small density becomes very ineffective because they will consume only the plants that they can easily consume that they prefer, and they will leave their non-preferred plants, which means non-preferred plants will increase in density every year. Got it. Filling the gap of the preferred plant. Um, the grass carp, you know, technically they're rooting, they're looking for vegetation. So as eradication occurs, now they're grabbing anything that sprouts up. So they could, in those situations, at a high enough density, they could start to create some sort of turbidity issue if you have loose soil. They could disrupt spawning beds periodically as they try to find vegetation. Uh, most frequent complaint we get is that the grass carp actually start to come to the fish food and consume fish food because it's a it's an easy source for them to get nutrient. So they'll start eating fish food. Once they start eating fish food, they their effectiveness of controlling vegetation will decline. And that is about the time when you need to remove them. Um, they can be caught easily on. Frozen vegetables with a rod and reel. Um, so you know, the best eradication methods are to just go fish and harvest them. You you know how many you stocked, you'll be able to keep record of how many pull out. And Bailey, I don't know about you, but if I could catch a 40-pound any kind of fish on a spinning reel, I'm gonna go do that.
SPEAKER_00That was my brother and I's childhood was going down to the local river with ice fishing rods and a can of corn, and that was how we passed our days. There you go.
SPEAKER_01Hello, so that's the grass carb story.
SPEAKER_00Cool. All right, last one for you, and this is from Deacon. Okay. Uh Deacon and I often get on tangents on the Western segment about hunting. And we talked so many times about the similarities between chasing giant bucks and chasing giant bass, and how there's a lot of correlations there. Um, he wanted to ask if there are if it is possible for uh bass to develop individual personalities similar to how a mature whitetail can almost have their own personality.
SPEAKER_01The answer is yes, completely. It's not only possible, it happens all the time. Um, fish are conditioned by number one, their environment. Um, so if you think of the forage that's available, water color, water clarity, the habitat types, they're going to develop a successful hunting strategy in that environment, a successful reproductive strategy in that environment, right? And as they change in size, then how they interact with that environment can change. Um, bass, in general, uh, we consider them a type of fish that can manipulate the environment. Their presence changes the system. And therefore, an individual and how it uses that environment is gonna impact how other individuals use that environment, both bass species and other species of fish, just their presence alone. Uh, so you get, you know, especially as what you guys are talking about, trophy-sized fish. Trophy-sized fish, number one, first and foremost, are always female. They're female fish. Um, female fish are going to develop an egg mass either late in the year or very early in the year, and then in springtime, they're gonna go shallow and they're gonna spawn. Whenever they come into the system, they're gonna pair off with a male that is smaller than them. At any point in the year, that male also could technically be food in a lot of situations because it's that small compared to her. Right. So her presence during a spawning time is very different than her presence during a non-spawning window, where that male may push to be in close proximity with her during spawning time and push her to his nest. Uh, the other nine months out of the year, he's gonna run from her. Where she may prefer a certain habitat type in spawning season, she may prefer a very different offshore type of habitat in the other months, and how those fish interact with her will change. The same thing will happen during winter when if you notice, like there's windows of the year where similar size fish group together, and in the winter that falls apart. Like all of a sudden, in the winter, you could be catching a six-inch bass, and the next cast catch a 10. Uh, they just they group together different based on the time of year. But to y'all's to y'all's point, you can also train these fish. If we go back to the private pond example, there are hundreds of YouTube videos, Facebook videos of people hand feeding bass. Well you don't that's a learned it's a learned habit. That's a personality type that at some point the fish gets big enough and is like, I am not scared of the human, the human's gonna hand me food now.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, if the fish whisper is a page that comes to mind, it's very famous for doing that.
SPEAKER_01Right. So there's so there's great examples. Um I mean that's across all animals. We call it personality. It it is it is really just an environmental induced behavior, and fish, specifically bass, can work in both directions. They are trained by their environment, and at the same time, they manipulate others in their environment with their presence.
SPEAKER_00Got it. Okay, yeah, love that. Well, Steve, thanks for the QA. We're gonna have more obviously coming soon, some more different shows, but we'll always always circle back to the QA's uh because we always get a lot of questions coming in. We got more to go through, but like I told people, this is gonna be a quicker show. Um, but uh anything else to add to the folks besides the uh the WWE belt that is gonna be shined up and handed off to Canyon tomorrow.
SPEAKER_01I will um I'll send you some fish pictures. Um I guess I should ask you, did you did you see a big fish in California? Did you see one that made you go, I'm I am not in New York anymore?
SPEAKER_00Uh yes, I lost like a seven or eight pounder on day one.
SPEAKER_01All right.
SPEAKER_00That was really fun. Uh really enjoyed losing that fish. Um did I see one? No. Um, because for anybody who doesn't know, Clear Lake is really not that clear at all. Uh and it was if we were a couple weeks earlier, it would have been a bunch of fish still on beds, but there was very little left. Uh I caught a five, five and a half in practice. Um, but I saw the photos of the guy's nine and a half, nine and three quarter pounder that he caught. Uh, and that was impressive build on that fish. Um, right.
SPEAKER_01And then I I guess this means so based on the California trip, and then did you have one more when you got back?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I had a tournament on Cayuga at home once I got back. Yeah, and how'd that go? There were four tournaments in two days. Um yeah, there's two two-day events. One was actually a team tournament, which was cool. Got to work with a buddy of mine, and then an individual tournament each day, Saturday and Sunday. Um got seventh in the individual on day one out of like 60 something, uh, made a wrong move and had basically zero fish at 11 o'clock and was able to get 94 95 inches. Um got second in the team tournament, got second in the two-day tournament, and then won the single day on Sunday. Had about close to a 30-pound bag of small mouth on Sunday.
SPEAKER_01Congrats, bro. Congrats. And so, where does that put where does that put you in points?
SPEAKER_00Uh only one of the tournaments was factored in for points, and you need your five events for Angler of the Year. It's the one that I've won Angler of the Year for the past four years, and I won't even have enough events to even be in the AOI AOI race for this year because of because you're Bassmaster this year. But um, no, it's actually kind of nice. I get to just go swing for a mega bag each tournament and just you know sit back and watch the AOI race happen and not have to worry about it. So it's it's kind of a fun little dynamic, but um And so for Bassmaster, where do we stand? We're in fifth right now. We're 40 points, I think, out of first. Uh, but the guy Ewing Minor, gotta give him props because he's there every single year at the top. Uh, is a very, very, very hard guy to run down, and he's going to his home fishery the next event. So it's gonna be uh we have a mountain that's gonna be on the Susquehanna River. Okay, you're fishing that one too. Yeah, I've I fished the whole schedule this year, and there's two left the Susquehanna and then the Wolf and Fox River in Wisconsin in August, and then we have our three-day national championship on Lake Murray in October. Perfect.
SPEAKER_01And you're already qualified for Murray.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, just based on math. I mean, it's not like a you know, you have the check mark, but uh based on top 50 AOI and having a 50th, a 12th, and an eighth, we're we're good. We're in.
SPEAKER_01Okay, good, good. Well, we all look forward to uh to hearing more. Yeah, and best of luck, man. Best of luck. Keep swinging.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah. Appreciate the time as always, my friend. Uh, we'll get together soon and uh looking forward to seeing these pictures of Peacock bass, dude.
SPEAKER_01I can't wait. Can't wait.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, well, folks, appreciate you guys so much for tuning in. Thank you guys for taking time out of your day. Again, if you have questions you want to report to Steve and have him answer on the show, you guys know the communications and the social medias and emails, all that stuff to get in touch with us. Uh, happy to answer your questions on the show. But appreciate y'all, and we'll see you on the next one.