Around the Boathouse

News & Notes from the Arkansas Game & Fish Commission

AGFC Communications

• Catfish anglers at the AGFC Family and Community Fishing Program ponds have until midnight next Saturday, Oct. 31, to get their tags (like the one shown in the photo right) postmarked and set to the AGFC headquarters to win prizes in the FCFP's annual tagged catfish promotion. Tags are still out there to be found on catfish that were stocked in the program's 47 ponds around the state (visit www.agfc.com/en/fishing/ where-fish/family-andcommunity/ stocking for a pond near you). Everyone who catches a tagged catfish wins a prize, as long as they're mailed back in, and they are automatically entered in a drawing for three half-day guided fishing trips on Beaver Lake.

That drawing will take place Nov. 5 and will be broadcast live on the AGFC's Facebook page.

• Catfish aren't the only species being tagged for contests. Crappie will be tagged starting next month by AGFC biologists at Lake Nimrod as part of an intense evaluation of the fishery over the next year.

Signs will be placed at Lake Nimrod access points, and anglers will also want to inspect their crappie for a small yellow tag. Anyone catching a tagged crappie is asked to report the tag by calling the number provided on it. If tags are turned in, they will even be worth a reward to the anglers.

Biologists always want to make sure they are managing a fishery in a sustainable way. This could mean trying to strike a balance between maximizing the pounds of fish anglers can safely harvest and the type of population anglers desire. In order to inform biologists on how best to accomplish this, collecting data about the fishing behaviors of anglers is just as critical as understanding the fish population, hence the tagged crappie effort at Nimrod.

• The Lake Hinkle nursery pond west of Waldron in western Arkansas was stocked with adult threadfin shad last year in order for those fish to reproduce and be stocked later in the year into Lake Hinkle. Prior to this stocking there were no threadfin shad in Lake Hinkle.

During recent sampling, AGFC staff observed outstanding numbers of threadfin shad in the lake.

The Fisheries Division says it's encouraging that a single nursery pond stocking can be so successful and contribute to the lake this much this soon.

• Greers Ferry Lake received another boost in its forage fish population recently with the stocking of over 100,000 yearling threadfin shad. This marks the fifth year in a row that threadfin have been stocked with the intent of reestablishing a viable population after the crash of the population in 2014-15.

Anecdotal evidence indicates efforts have been successful. Reports from anglers and sonar imagery during routine sampling and habitat work on the lake indicate large schools of threadfin in all portions of the lake.