Next Meeting August 19th

[fireant21]

Our next meeting is Tuesday the 19th at Beef O'Brady's. We will be drawing for the Apalachicola Tournament. We will be staying at Bay City and launching there as well.

In case you missed it, Charlie Messing with FWC was at our last meeting and gave a thorough report on the new hatchery in Eustis. It is a state of the art facility with the original capacity of raising 1.5 million fingerlings per year. Charlie gave an in depth walk through of the facility with slides. He also detailed the report of how the stocking program has progressed since 2001 on Lake Talquin.

The evidence shows that the stocking program has worked well to lengthen the drawdown intervals while still producing a sufficient catch ratio. Charlie's insight about what to expect from frequent drawdowns was very eye opening for myself. The longer the interval, the more vegetation will grow in the soil that is exposed as a result of the drawdown, (more nutrients between periods). This larger bank of vegetation allows the fry to have habitat to mature in and a place for prey to interact with these fish allowing them to mature more rapidly due to sufficient food. The two year periods after a drawdown are the most productive while the vegetation is still there.

One "bonus" of the stocking program is the increase in Florida strain genes in the overall population. The fingerlings that were and still are being released are all Florida strain. The bonus, is the Florida strain spawns earlier than fish that have northern strain alleles. The problem with earlier Lake Talquin bass populations, was that they quite frankly spawn too late to take advantage of the threadfin shad spawn. The threadfin shad mature at a rate that surpasses the ability of current year bass fry to feed upon them. This leaves the bass with the ability to only feed on insects and other small prey. This greatly reduces the growth potential in these bass in their first year. The fingerlings on average were 10-12" after the first year where native fish were only 5" on average. It is hoped that by increasing the Florida strain allele percentage of the entire population, the fish will tend to spawn earlier and take advantage of the shad spawn as the stocked fish currently do.

One final note, Charlie said there are no plans at this point to draw down the lake. The drawdowns in the future will only occur as requested by users requesting such action. The period of time between a request, an approval by FWC, and the draw down actually occurring, is 2 years. They must go through public hearings and the like to inform all users and allow for appeals. This is part of the reason for the length of time.

Currently, Charlie is working on a two year study on Lake Talquin to identify if pellet raised fingerlings or natural prey fingerlings survive better. My thanks to Charlie and to all those at FWC that work tirelessly on this resource. These ladies and gentlemen devote their own personal time to follow up on their research and their hard work often goes unnoticed. Way to go!