Some Beaver Lake Stocking News

[Quillback]

I just read the quarterly report for the fall quarter put out by the Charlie Craig hatchery. Last fall they stock approximately 50,000 channel cats and 30,000 blue cats. These fish were reportedly 6" on average, so I would suspect there will be a relatively high number of them that make it to catchable size. They also released 500,000 crappie fingerlings from the crappie rearing pond located south of the 12 bridge. This number was one of the highest ever released for crappie, they had recently done some improvement work on the rearing ponds and this accounted for the high number of fingerlings released.

Also the AGFC did some shad sampling using nets and they experienced higher catch rates for both gizzard and threafin shad, indicating a higher shad population for the lake than it had last year.

[Feathers and Fins]

She is Healthy.

Thats a lot of fish stocked, any word on walleye samplings?

I just wish they would stock trout at Prairie Creek, I see so many families out there not catching anything, winter would be a perfect time to drop trout off, people could fish for them all along the swim beach no boat zone plus the old road dirt area. Just thinking out loud

[Quillback]

Nope, nothing on the wallies. Yep I could see stocking some rainbows in the PC cove as being a good thing during the winter time, as long as they hung around and didn't scatter out into the lake. I'd also be concerned that the stripers would figure it out and get in there and clean them out. But nothing ventured, nothing gained.

I've also thought they should stock cats in Lake Bella Vista (it's named Bella Vista, but it's owned by Bentonville, thus open to the public). Lots of bank access there and you see a lot of folks with kids fishing it, but not having much success, would sure help if they had a bunch of 12" cats in there.

[Greasy B]

I just read the quarterly report for the fall quarter put out by the Charlie Craig hatchery. Last fall they stock approximately 50,000 channel cats and 30,000 blue cats. These fish were reportedly 6" on average, so I would suspect there will be a relatively high number of them that make it to catchable size. They also released 500,000 crappie fingerlings from the crappie rearing pond located south of the 12 bridge. This number was one of the highest ever released for crappie, they had recently done some improvement work on the rearing ponds and this accounted for the high number of fingerlings released.

Also the AGFC did some shad sampling using nets and they experienced higher catch rates for both gizzard and threafin shad, indicating a higher shad population for the lake than it had last year.

I'm courious, is the practice of stocking fish species that would reproduce naturally is a reservoir the size of Beaver good use of wildlife funds? Wouldn't habitat improvement provide a greater economic return over time?

Thanks for any comments,

[Quillback]

Well I think habitat improvements would definitely help, but you also have to deal with lake flutuation, habitat that is 10 feet deep in the spring might be high and dry in the winter. Something about Beaver just doesn't seem to lend itself well to healthy fish populations, too much deep water? Too much fluctuation in water level? Lack of habitat during low water times? According to the bios, fish reproduce well in Beaver in high water springs like we've had the last few years.

[Guest]

How many years since the last walleye stocking? I wonder if they're starting to reproduce successfully. High water has helped the lake on other ways too. The new high waterline killed thousands of shoreline hardwoods that are falling in the lake.

[Quillback]

They stocked 187,000 Walleye fingerling last year in Beaver. Here's an earlier thread with that info and some more comments by folks on this board.

[Feathers and Fins]

There is tons of structure in Beaver, I mark it all the time seems to increase right after christmas.

People constantly are making new structure in the lake, if you take your time and cruise it slowly with your unit on you will see nothing one day and a few days later all of the sudden there is something new added. The one thing that would be nice is artificial reefs.

[Hojo]

Any bass stocking report?

[Stump bumper]

Any bass stocking report?

All reports I have read there are to many bass and reproducing at higher rates than is healthy for increasing the size of bass.