Please see the following notice from Alice Best with Texas Parks and Wildlife about a sampling and stocking activity at Willow Waterhole on Tuesday, November 1.

Join us if you can. If you need directions call me but the launch spot is just in the main gate that is accessed off Chimney Rock and Dryad.

“From the sounds of it most people are available Tuesday morning and afternoon, so here is the plan:  We will meet at the Unit 5 on Tuesday at 10 am.  We will be launching the boat on the ‘ramp’ where we have stocked fish before:  it is on the right near the entrance to the parking area.    I do not know how any people will be able to make it so the tentative plan is for a large group, though we can condense if fewer people can make it.  I will stay on the bank with the majority of the group, while 1 or 2 volunteers rotate through on the EF boat.  That way everyone who wants to will get some boat time.  While on shore I will have a tank with some of the collected fish and I can go over species ID, ecology, anatomy, or anything fish-related y’all want to learn about.  We may move the tank and ‘education area’ to a shady spot if we can find one, but lets plan to all meet at the launch site initially.  Hopefully we will finish with Unit 5 by lunch and we will move to another unit.  Those of you who can hang around that long or only come in the afternoon could get additional boat time then.  Each Unit will get 1 hour (12, 5-minute stations) of effort, and with additional time to switch out volunteers and launch/load the boat, so each site will take ~2.5 hours.  We will need to have the boat loaded and on the road by 3.  Any locations we do not get to Tuesday, our crew will return at a later date and do speedier survey.

Also, after sending out the original email on Monday, hatcheries told us on Wednesday that they will be stocking channel catfish at Willow Waterhole next Tuesday when we are sampling.  Their schedule is not flexible so y’all will also get to see a catfish stocking!  Catfish are not very responsive to the type of electro-fishing we will be doing, and we will release any we do accidentally catch, so the timing coincidence will not be an issue.  (Different fish are different current types and pulse frequency of electricity.  All of our sampling is done with a pulsed current that ranges from 15 pulse/second to 60 pulses/second.  Catfish are resistant to the higher pulse rates, but highly sensitive to the lower pulse rates, which is why old ‘telephoning’ worked so well.  Centrarchids like Bass and Sunfish, and Cyprinids are the exact opposite. We will be using a higher pulse rate to target Bass, Sunfish, Minnows, Tilapia and Carp.  Later in the winter, when survival is higher we will come back with entrapment nets that target catfish)

Looking forward to seeing everyone there!”

Alice

Alice Best

Fisheries Biologist

Texas Parks and Wildlife Department, Inland Fisheries

Mike Frankoff-713-553-3003