NORTHWEST TERRITORY : Stocking of striped bass saved for Beaver Lake

Tag : High Stocking

Love them or hate them, striped bass will continue to be stocked inBeaver Lake for at least another year. However, the recent releaseof about 90, 000 fingerling stripers into the lake nearlydidn’t happen, according to Ron Moore, the Rogers-baseddistrict fisheries biologist with the Arkansas Game and FishCommission. “We were looking forward to doing the stocking inhigh water when the fingerlings do much better, but we thought wemight have to cancel it altogether because of a problem at the HotSprings hatchery,” Moore said Thursday. He explained thatstripers destined for stocking are spawned and raised to fingerlingsize in Hot Springs, but when this year’s crop was separatedfor shipment, they were found to be contaminated with yellow bass.“No one knows how the yellow bass got mixed in with thestripers, but they are the first cousins to white bass and areprolific spawners,” Moore said. “We don’t haveyellow bass in Beaver Lake and we didn’t want to see them getstarted in the lake.” Consequently, the stocking appeared tobe a bust until someone at the hatchery came up with a novelsolution to separate the yellow bass from the stripers.
“Someone decided that since striped bass are originally asaltwater species, they should be able to tolerate saltwater, whilea freshwater species like yellow bass shouldn’t toleratesaltwater. So what they did was put all the fish in a saltwatersolution for about 12 hours,” Moore explained. The experimentworked. The little stripers adapted to the saltwater solution andthe yellow bass died. The fingerlings were transferred back tofreshwater for shipment to Beaver Lake and appeared to havesurvived the transition and journey when they were released intothe lake near the U. S. 412 bridge. “They really lookedgood,” Moore said. Pending continued success with thesaltwater treatment, Moore hopes to meet this year’s goal ofstocking 200, 000 striper fingerlings in Beaver Lake.
SMALL LAKES GET FISH, TOO Sixteen small lakes and ponds acrossNorthwest Arkansas received stockings of catchable catfish andrainbow trout during June as part of the Game and FishCommission’s summer fishing program.
Altogether, commission crews stocked more than 2 million fishweighing about 89, 000 pounds during the month.
By county and location, area lakes and ponds receiving fish ofcatchable size included: Benton County: Lake Bentonville, 400channel catfish; Lowell city pond, 400 channel catfish; VeteransPark Pond II, 600 channel catfish. Washington County: Elkinscommunity pond, 250 channel catfish; Murphy Park pond, 250 channelcatfish; Lake Wedington, 300 channel catfish. Carroll County: LakeBerryville, 400 channel catfish. Madison County: Withrow Springspond, 350 rainbow trout. Sebastian County: Wells Lake, 1, 400channel catfish; Lake Jack Nolen, 250 catfish. Newton County: DeerPond, 400 channel catfish. Boone County: Harrison city lake, 550channel catfish. Franklin County: Shores Lake, 300 channel catfish.Pope County: Old Post Park pond, 600 catfish; Pleasant View Parkpond, 300 catfish. Johnson County: Pleasant Hill pond, 300 channelcatfish. Many of the ponds stocked with catchable catfish duringJune also received earlier stockings of catfish during April andMay.
AVIAN ODDITY A pair of fledgling barn swallows found in WhiteCounty may represent the first known occurrence of Siamese-twinbirds in avian history, according to Karen Rowe, nongame migratorybird program coordinator with the Game and Fish Commission.
The Siamese twins were found alive but unable to fly and werequickly delivered to a migratory bird rehabilitator, who turned thebirds over to the care of a veterinarian.
Initial examination revealed the birds to have two heads, twotails, four wings and three legs. X-rays, however, showed a fourthleg tucked inside a pocket of skin. The X-rays also showed thebirds were attached by skin and possibly some muscle tissue andthat each bird appeared to have complete and separate digestivesystems.
One bird died soon after being taken to the veterinarian and theother’s health was so poor that it had to be euthanized.Plans are for the birds to be preserved at the SmithsonianInstitution in Washington.
“A search of ‘conjoined bird twins’ has yieldedno other such examples as the one from White County,” Rowesaid in an e-mail.