Golf course ponds becoming nurseries
Lakes and Fisheries superintendent Rick Echols is hoping the third time is the charm for his fish nursery plan. He’s ready to try again, with four of the golf-course ponds on Berksdale.
Last year, just as the nursery ponds were getting started, they were flooded and most of the fish were washed out.
“They may be in Missouri by now,” he said.
A few of the original brood fish were found when his staff started draining the ponds this winter. They saved those fish and will probably use them again as broodstock.
The first use of the ponds was in 2016 when Echols drained two of the ponds and turned them into fish nurseries. One of the ponds was used for crappie. Echols caught the broodstock in one of the POA lakes and let them breed in the golf pond. After a summer of growing in the pond, the fish were moved successfully into the POA lakes.
It didn’t work out as well in the second pond. The POA had been stocking a hybrid called saugeye since 2011, but saugeye can’t reproduce without some human intervention. So Echols wanted to introduce walleye. In 2016, he explained that walleye will continue to bite all winter and some Bella Vistans really miss winter fishing. So he went in search of walleye fry to raise in his new nursery pond. Eventually, he found the fry in Iowa and bought them for the pond.
“We thought we were compliant,” Echols said about moving the fry, but because the fish were from out of state, Game and Fish intervened. The walleye were “quarantined” in the nursery pond.
If he could have moved them in June as planned, he probably would have moved 75,000 small fish. But as he waited for the state’s approval, the fish began to eat each other. When he finally got approval to move them in the fall, only about 100 were left.
Meanwhile, the state donated about 25,000 walleye fry to the POA even though it doesn’t usually help stock private lakes.
Last fall when his staff members were doing a routine fish count, they found several walleye. Some may have been part of the Game and Fish stock and some may have been from the original nursery pond. Now, Echols plans to go find them again and take some to use as broodstock in two of the ponds.
Once the ponds are drained, they have to sit and dry out for a couple of weeks. That ensures there aren’t any larger fish left that will eat the fry. Some insects can also be dangerous to the fry, and draining the pond helps eliminate them. Echols said he might have to do some more pumping after the pond sits for a couple of weeks.
The ponds on the Berksdale course have a valve so they can be refilled with creek water, Echols said. He chose those ponds partly because they are easy to refill. The creek water is filtered, so tiny wildlife isn’t a problem. In 2016, Echols said he expected some fish to be eaten by wildlife, including herons, but there should be enough fry to compensate for those losses.
The POA still stocks channel catfish and grass carp. In the winter, trout are stocked in Lake Brittany. But Echols plan should produce enough fish that crappie and walleye won’t have to be purchased for POA lakes.