Missouri on hook for stripers

Against the wishes of the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission and anglers in north Arkansas, the Missouri Department of Conservation will stock striped bass in Bull Shoals lake.

In 2010, the AGFC and MDC developed a joint striper management plan for Bull Shoals that involved stocking 22,000 striper fingerlings every other year. The AGFC withdrew from the agreement after an overwhelming majority of anglers protested. Now, the MDC will proceed alone by stocking 16,000 striper fingerlings in the lake sometime this year.

The AGFC announced Tuesday that it does not approve of the MDC’s intentions and isn’t involved in this “Missouri compromise.”

Bull Shoals Lake is a 45,000-acre impoundment of the White River that stretches roughly from Branson to near Flippin. Thanks to an aggressive stocking and management program by the AGFC, it has one of the best trophy walleye fisheries in America. Thanks also to a couple of excellent reproduction years in 2009 and 2011, it is one of the best bass fishing lakes in America. So is Table Rock Lake, which is directly upstream.

Mike Armstrong, assistant director for the AGFC, is also the former chief of the agency’s fisheries division. He said that Bull Shoals will likely be a top-tier bass fishery for at least the next 10 years because of the higher water level mandated by the new White River minimum flow guidelines. This new water management plan is designed to provide minimum flow for the White River below Bull Shoals Dam to improve water quality and trout habitat.

Supplying water for minimum flow in the tailwater requires raising the level of the lake’s normal pool a few feet. This simulates flood conditions in the lake by inundating new habitat that was formerly above the waterline.

With fishing at Bull Shoals in high cotton, this is either the best time to stock stripers in the lake or it is the worst time. It depends on perspective.

Stripers are naturally pelagic fish that spawn in coastal tributaries and then return to the sea, like salmon. When stocked in landlocked freshwater lakes, stripers do not reproduce, but they do grow to immense sizes. They anchor thriving charter businesses on lakes Ouachita and Norfork, drawing anglers from all over the country.

For that reason, striper fishing is valuable to tourism. Arguably, Bull Shoals already grows the biggest stripers in Arkansas and Missouri. Rodney Ply of Diamond City insists he caught the Arkansas state-record striper in February 2012. The AGFC does not recognize it as the record. Ply said that’s because the AGFC doesn’t want to acknowledge the trophy potential of a striper fishery in Bull Shoals, and he appears sincere about taking his case to court.

Anglers who fish for largemouth and spotted bass don’t want stripers in Bull Shoals because stripers are voracious predators that eat a lot of shad. Bass anglers say stripers distress black bass populations by eating too many shad, especially in lean years. Some believe that stripers also eat bass, which they probably do in lean years when shad numbers are depressed. Bull Shoals has had a lot of lean years over the past five decades, and the resurgence of its black bass fishery is a story of national prominence in the fishing media.

Anglers who fish for largemouth and smallmouth bass, collectively known as black bass, are the backbone of the Bull Shoals fishing culture. They don’t want the AGFC stocking stripers in that lake, so the AGFC deferred. The MDC even sent representatives to talk to bass anglers in northern Arkansas, but they were not able to sway them. At that time, Brian Canaday, the MDC’s fisheries field operations chief, said, “We certainly understand their concern of stocking another large predator,” and added that the MDC had no plans to move forward in the short term.

Apparently, the short term was about one year. Most of the lake is in Arkansas. The MDC would likely derive little benefit from this program.

Mark Oliver, chief of fisheries for the AGFC, said the AGFC might reconsider its position later, but he said this is not the right time.

“Right now, anglers are experiencing some great fishing in Bull Shoals due to the high water from a few years ago,” Oliver said. “MDC has been a valuable partner on many cooperative Arkansas-Missouri projects, but we simply can’t agree that this stocking is the best course of action at this time based on the comments we have received from our anglers.”