Sometimes you learn a lot when you just stop to say hi.
It was raining Wednesday morning, and I was driving on the west side of Rogers. It had been eons since I’d chatted with Ron Moore, our local fisheries biologist with the Arkansas Game & Fish Commission. I popped into his oftce at the end of Oak Street just to say howdy and see what’s going on.
Turns out all is well in the world of fish here in our corner of the Ozarks.
It’s pretty darn good with the deer, too.
Ron and fellow biologist John Stein just finished a big crappie study at Lake Elmdale, near Springdale.
They did some trap netting and other research. Ron summed up the results on Elmdale’s crappie. “There aren’t many,” he said.
Game & Fish will likely stock crappie soon at Lake Elmdale to give it a boost.
There may not be many crappie, but there are lots of largemouth bass at Lake Elmdale. Too many, Moore said.
Electrofishing by Game & Fish at the lake show that they’re overpopulated.
It may be that the modernmindset of bass fi shermen to release all bass has taken hold at Lake Elmdale. There’s no length limit on largemouth bass at the lake, and Moore encourages bass anglers to keep the fi sh - please.
‘Tis the season when anglers start fi shing at Swepco Lake in good numbers. That’s the 500-acre power plant lake near Gentry. It stays warm all winter because of hot-water discharge from the coal-fueled Flint Creek Power Plant.
The makeup of the bass population at Swepco is where it ought to be, Moore said. There’s a healthy number of fish in all sizes.
To make sure, he and Stein plan to electrofish the lake in December. The bass spawn at Swepco last year was good, Moore said. That bodes well for future bass fishing at Swepco.
Angler reports from Swepco are good. See today’s fishing report.
Our Swepco Lake contact, Kenny Stroud in Siloam Springs, said he and a buddy caught 35 bass to 3 pounds in four hours at Swepco this week.
There’s good news from Beaver Lake, too. Threadfi n shad are the bait fish that drives the food chain at Beaver Lake. All game fish eat them. Shad spawn, just like game fish do. Moore said his study shows an abundance of shad from the last spawn. For game fi sh, that’s like a full fridge after going to the grocery store.
I checked with Moore to see if removing the length limit from spotted bass at Beaver Lake had been approved by Game & Fish commissioners. He assured me it had.
Starting Jan. 1, anglers may keep any spotted bass at Beaver, regardless of size, up to a limit of six.
We had to talk deer hunting before I said goodbye. Most hunters will testify that there’s a bumper crop of acorns this autumn. In some places, it’s like someone has taken bushel baskets of acorns and scattered them on the ground.
This means deer don’t need to roam far to fi nd food. Hunters may see fewer deer.
Rain that fell Wednesday is good news, Moore said. Those acorns soak up that rain and they start to rot. Deer may begin keying on other foods and moving around more, which is Saturday and Sunday.
Nice to hear good news all around, from the water and the woods. Glad I stopped.
FLIP PUTTHOFF IS OUTDOORS EDITOR FOR NWA MEDIA.
Outdoor, Pages 6 on 10/31/2013