In response to Missouri stocking striped bass in Bull Shoals Lake, the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission is considering stocking stripers in Table Rock Lake.
The Game and Fish Commission discussed the border striper conflict at length Wednesday during its monthly work meeting in Little Rock. The conflict centers on the Missouri Department of Conservation's insistence on stocking striped bass in Bull Shoals Lake, which the AGFC adamantly opposes.
Chris Racey, chief of the AGFC's fisheries management division, began his presentation with a geographical outline of Bull Shoals and Table Rock. Racey's first Powerpoint slide showed that 15,940 of Bull Shoals surface acres are in Missouri, which is about one-third of the lake's total 45,440 acres.
Commissioner Ken Reeves of Harrison disputed that datum. Referring to the map on the slide, Reeves said no calculation can compute that one-third of Bull Shoals is in Missouri. Furthermore, Reeves added, having less acreage further erodes Missouri's prerogative to stock stripers in a lake that is mostly in Arkansas.
Table Rock Lake, which does not contain striped bass, covers 44,000 surface acres. Only about 2,000 are in Arkansas and are limited to the headwater area below Beaver Dam, which impounds 28,500-acre Beaver Lake. Beaver Lake is entirely within Arkansas. Lake Norfork, which impounds the North Fork of the White River, covers 22,000 acres, of which only about 1,000 acres are in Missouri.
Beaver and Norfork have long supported popular but controversial striped bass fisheries. Anglers that prefer to fish for bass, crappie and walleye believe stripers consume too many threadfin shad, which is the primary forage for game fish in river impoundments.
"Striped bass feed largely on shad, from 89 to 98 percent," Racey said. "There's a lot of literature to support this. They're not directly impacting sport fish populations by eating them [sport fish], but they eat shad, which largemouth bass eat and walleyes eat, also."
Neither state stocked stripers in Bull Shoals in recent years, but the AGFC stocked about 100,000 in 1970-1975. Another 19,000 went into the lake in 1998. The AGFC said that stocking occurred accidentally when a truck operator released a load of stripers into the wrong lake.
"That's what I've been told," AGFC director Mike Knoedl said in a previous conversation in November. "Whether that's true or not, I don't know. That was a long time ago."
Stripers have a potential lifespan of about 20 years in northern freshwater lakes, Racey said, and the fish that were stocked in 1998 are reaching record class sizes. On May 21, Lawrence Dillman of Rockaway Beach, Mo., caught the Missouri state record striper in the Bull Shoals headwaters below Powersite Dam. It weighed 65 pounds, 2 ounces.
Originally, the AGFC and MDC initiated a joint program in 2010-2011 to stock stripers in Bull Shoals, Racey said. The AGFC and MDC held five public meetings to get public input. Three meetings were in Arkansas, including one in Harrison. Reeves, an avid Bull Shoals bass angler, attended the Harrison meeting, but he was not on the commission at that time.
"About 70 people were there, and not a single person said we want you to stock stripers in Bull Shoals," Reeves said. "Brian Canaday [the MDC's chief of fisheries] said he would not stock stripers in Bull Shoals if the State of Arkansas does not concur."
On May 16, 2013, the MDC announced it had begun stocking stripers in Bull Shoals because of the excitement among Missouri anglers about the lake's blossoming trophy striper fishery.
Racey said the MDC did not notify the AGFC beforehand, and that the AGFC learned about it only through the MDC's press release.
The MDC stocked 16,000 stripers in Bull Shoals in 2013, and it stocked 22,000 in May.
Reeves said Canaday lied at the Harrison meeting, and that the MDC intended to stock stripers from the start. Commissioner Fred Brown, who attended a joint meeting with Reeves between AGFC and MDC fisheries personnel, said he got the same impression.
Commission chairman Emon Mahony said, "I'm not sure 'lie' is the appropriate word."
"You weren't there," Reeves said.
"The Missouri guys said if the people of Arkansas are opposed to this, we will not do it," Brown said. "Their statement was very short, 'We will not do it if Arkansas doesn't want to do it.'"
Mahony said that Canaday might have been compelled to stock stripers in Bull Shoals by the MDC's upper administration, or from a Missouri Conservation Commission member.
Commissioner Ford Overton said if that were the case, then Canaday should have "manned up" and notified the AGFC privately instead of delivering the news through a press release.
At the end of the presentation, Racey said the possible ramifications of stocking stripers in Table Rock would almost certainly be detrimental to a very popular trout fishery below Beaver Dam, which is about the only place accessible to AGFC stocking trucks.
Stripers eat a lot of trout where they overlap, such as in the lower Illinois River below Lake Tenkiller in Oklahoma. The Arkansas state record striper (64-8) was caught in the Beaver Tailwater in 2000 and is believed to be a fish that came through the Beaver Lake floodgates during a period of excessive high water in 1989. It had subsisted primarily on trout.
At least 13,000 anglers fish the Beaver Tailwater annually, Racey said, and that it ranks third among the state's waters most often fished for trout. The AGFC stocks about $148 million worth of trout in the Beaver Tailwater annually, and that the economic impact is about $20 million annually.
According to the AGFC's striped bass management plan, the AGFC stocks stripers at a rate of 2-7 fingerlings per acre, depending on the lake. Beaver and Norfork receive 7 striper fingerlings per acre annually, or 200,000 and 154,000, respectively. Lake Ouachita gets 3 per acre (110,000), and Lake Hamilton gets 2 per acre (12,000).
Missouri is stocking fewer than 2 fingerlings per acre, and only for the nearly 16,000 acres in Missouri, which Reeves disputed. It is a very small number of fish, Racey said, especially considering that 50 percent die each year. Of the 22,000 stripers stocked in May, Racey said that 50 percent would die the first year, and that roughly 50 percent of the survivors will die between years 2-3, and so on.
"Biologically I don't see any concerns," Racey said. "It's a low density stocking that's 28 times less dense than what we're doing at Norfork, but public input was very clear, and we felt we needed go a different route.
"This is not the first joint proposal we've ever done. We've done a lot, but on this issue we cannot agree with Missouri on the direction they want to go."
Officials for the MDC could not be reached for comment before press time.
Sports on 12/20/2015