Battle against invasive plants, critters takes everyone

After doing some bream fishing at Tippah County Lake last week, I went out to clean up the boat and found the prop of my trolling motor covered in nasty-looking, matted, green grass.

I don’t know what kind of aquatic grass it was. But since I didn’t want to unleash it on the next lake I fish, I made sure I removed every speck of it.

Though invasive aquatic weeds like hydrilla and milfoil are sometimes moved intentionally by anglers who believe they’re doing their favorite lake a favor, the weeds are just as often introduced to new environments purely by accident.

Invasive fish species like Asian carp and blueback herring can be moved the same way — and no matter how the plants and critters are moved, they can become a multimillion-dollar problem for whoever’s responsible for managing the lake where they’re set free.

If you’re a boater or a fishermen, it’s something you should think about every time you go.

I’ve had more than one fisheries biologist tell me through the years that, once a lake becomes infested with a weed like hydrilla, the only way to get rid of it completely is to drain the lake and use herbicide on the dry lake bed.

Even that isn’t a sure thing.

So that matted mess of weeds that wrapped around my prop last week at Tippah County could have easily broken off and taken root at Pickwick or Reelfoot or whatever state lake I chose to visit next.

“It’s something people should be really careful about,” said Bobby Wilson, chief of fisheries for the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency. “Checking your boat for weeds and other contaminants should be a regular part of your fishing routine. You should do it every time you go, just to be safe.”

If you’re using wildcaught live bait, you have to be even more careful.

It’s illegal in Tennessee to catch bait (or any other kind of fish) from one body of water and release them into another.

The reasons are obvious.

Say you’re using a cast net to catch baitfish from the Mississippi River near Memphis. The river is full of Asian carp now — and as juveniles, the carp can easily be mistaken for shad or skipjack.

If you take a bucket full of small Asian carp and unknowingly dump them into another lake, it won’t be long before we have an old, familiar mess in a brand-new spot.

Most people agree, once Asian carp are unleashed on a new body of water, there is no getting rid of them. So it’s best to avoid the problem on the front end.

Not only is it illegal to move live fish from one lake to another, it’s illegal to haul certain fish and aquatic critters at all.

Tennessee’s blacklist includes silver carp, bighead carp, black carp, blueback herring, New Zealand mud snails, round gobies, rudds, ruffes, snakeheads, swamp eels and zebra mussels.

People who know fish say you just can’t be too careful.

“We don’t even let people bring other types of fish onto our property,” said Jamie Anderson of I. F. Anderson Farms in Lonoke, Ark. “People come here from Memphis all the time to buy our black salties for bait. If they’re planning to pick up a load of bluegill or catfish somewhere else, we ask that they come here f irst because we don’t want to run the risk of them bringing some kind of contaminant here by accident.”

Fisheries officials say you shouldn’t even dump water from your local bait store into your favorite lake to make sure you’re not moving anything by accident. You should also make sure your live well is empty and clean before visiting a new fishery.

Though it all sounds like a lot of trouble, it’s really not.

These precautions can be added to your fishing checklist without increasing your workload all that much — and considering the alternative, they are well worth whatever time it takes to do them right.