Efforts to raise fish in Bella Vista for local lakes partially succeeded, Fish Biologist Rick Echols told the Bella Vista Property Owners Lakes Committee in late October.
Workers drained two ponds on the Berksdale Golf Course last winter and prepared them to become fish nurseries.
One pond was dedicated to crappie. Workers captured brood fish in a nearby lake and moved them to the pond so they could reproduce in an environment safe for their offspring.
Echols and his staff recently moved 3,700 crappie, each between 4 and 6 inches long, to lakes Avalon, Brittany and Rayburn.
The second golf course pond was dedicated to walleye, which would be a new species for Bella Vista. Echols went looking for walleye fry to raise in the pond, but it wasn’t easy.
Arkansas Fish and Game regulates fisheries in Arkansas and controls fish being moved across state lines. Echols purchased 100,000 tiny walleye in Iowa to raise in the pond, but did not have Game and Fish approval. All the association lakes are public waterways, but not the golf course ponds. The walleye could be put in the pond, but could not be moved to a Bella Vista lake. They quickly outgrew the pond.
Game and Fish Commission staffers reversed course, Echols said, and he began moving walleye. The ideal time to move walleye was early June, when they were large enough to escape some predators, but still small enough to be eating plankton. By July, they had outgrown plankton and were eating each other.
When Echols began removing them in early October, he found about 100 walleye out of the 100,000. They all went to Lake Avalon. Echols said he had hoped to have about 50,000 to move.
Walleye can live in Bella Vista’s lakes, but it’s not an ideal habitat, he said. Walleye usually spawn in moving water. When eggs are released, they stick to rock near the surface so there’s plenty of oxygen. In the lake, the eggs will sink to the bottom and get attached very deep, where there isn’t enough oxygen, he said.
If they can capture walleye big enough to reproduce, they will hold them outside the pond until they spawn and then move the fry into a pond to grow for the first few months, Echols said. He is also considering moving some fish from Hot Springs Village lakes to spawn in Bella Vista. If the Hot Springs fish do well, he can send them some of the offspring for their lakes. Hot Springs, Echols said, doesn’t have a program to breed their own fish.