Welcome to the Arkansas Wildlife Podcast, the official podcast of the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission.

We are talking hunting, fishing and conservation with engaging guests and in-depth discussions with game and fish staff.

It's Arkansas Wildlife, the podcast for all things outdoors in the natural state.

Welcome to the Arkansas Wildlife Podcast.

Glad you're with us today.

I'm Trey Reed, your host.

We're joined by a couple of guys from our fisheries division, specifically our our bass team, our bass program.

We got Eric Nass and will lance it here from our Black Bass program.

And you know, if, unless you've been, underwater or in a hole somewhere, you've probably heard about our Legacy locker program, and, these guys have actually been on here before to talk about that.

But we're bringing them back.

It's, we just wrapped up the donation period for our first year of Legacy Locker on March 31st.

The fish are over at the Lone Oak Hatchery.

Spawning as we speak, I'm told.

But anyway, we wanted to check in with Will and Eric here to kind of give us an update.

How'd it go?

And, all those good things.

Guys, thanks for coming back on the podcast.

Appreciate it.

Thanks for having us.

You bet.

Well, let's just a simple question.

How did it go?

Well, I think a couple times I'd given an estimate maybe on this podcast and some others, but I know on one I said I thought we'd get 18 donations and one I said 20, and we ended up with 19.

So.

So right there in the middle.

So it's the same number that Texas had this year as well.

But you know, there's a little higher minimum weight.

But well, I'm pretty successful for the first year right.

We said our weight had a good weight.

And you know, we had anglers participate and didn't have too much to handle.

So we got 19 fish.

These were caught I guess the first one came in the first week of January, right?

I think it was January 10th.

Yeah.

Okay.

Second week then.

Yeah.

And had them coming in all the way to the like last one came in on 30th or 2 or 28.

Yeah.

Pretty much a buzzer beater.

Yeah.

It was funny.

We were, you know, sitting at the edge of our chairs waiting for that first fish to come in.

We were thinking we were never going to get one.

But right around that second week in January, they started rolling in pretty quick.

Yeah.

And then that one was from Lake Dawn.

Frost Austell.

I nearby was like done.

That's where we had our would be, state record bass that was disqualified because the angler didn't have a fishing license about 15 years ago or whenever that was.

So, yeah, Lake Austell, my bad.

And then we had two more come in from us now, just a couple days later.

Yeah.

Was was getting that, route pretty, pretty figured out on the way to Austell and back, so.

Well, in that second, fish number two and three from Austell were caught by the.

So the son of.

Yeah.

Legacy locker number one caught one of those and then his buddy in the same boat caught one while you were on your way over there.

Will.

Right.

So so this is a funny story.

The first fish was caught by Kevin Rainey.

And then the following week, I get a call in the caller ID says, Dylan.

Ronnie and I answer.

He reports a longer and I say, are you related to Kevin?

Like is here?

And he said, yeah, that's my dad.

And I said, oh my gosh, you the son of Kevin Ronnie Carter Legacy Locker.

What a cool story.

Well I texted it to everyone and communication's like get ready to write about this.

And, I get a call about, I don't know, an hour later and they called back and said, hey, I got another fish, we got another fish.

Unreal, man.

And I said, gosh, did you catch two?

And he said, no, no, I actually caught this one.

And I was like, oh man.

So when I told everyone that it was actually his friend.

Yeah, his friend caught number two and I misspoke and he he kind of build me out on that.

Well, that just how he what are the odds, man?

I mean, number one, what are the odds.

Well, we saw that there maybe greater than people thought they were before we started this program of catching a ten pounder period of public water in Arkansas.

We now know that they are out there in force.

But the fact that two people in the same boat, and really three from the same family and friend group within a 4 or 5 days time, just unbelievable.

And from a lake that wasn't even on our radar, really like Lake Austell of all places, was turning out fish like this.

Yeah.

I mean, to explain why it really wasn't on our radar.

I mean, it's up there in Northeast Arkansas.

Not many folks know about it.

Is Ridge right, a part of Village Creek State Park?

Yeah.

But we had socked for bass there in the past, and a lot of our sampling data showed kind of a stunted bass population.

We just never sampled those ten pluses or eight pluses whatever, out there.

And it was a really cool surprise to see our cell turnout.

Fish of that caliber.

Unbelievable.

Well, Will, that wasn't the only kind of crazy story.

The two for one deal that you did, you had another one a few weeks later, a degree.

So we had the double on numbers two and three, and then we had another double on five and six.

So, yeah, it was Tracy and Levi Lowe called in a fish, in, degree, which was only 40 minutes for my house.

And I said, all right, you've got 40 minutes to catch another one before I get there.

And they called me 20 minutes into my drive and said, you're not going to believe this, but we got another one.

And I said, they're twins.

Or, they were twin brothers, right?

They're twins.

They weren't identical twins.

But the day of they're both wearing the same thing.

And I'm like, wait, what's going on?

Let's see.

Double man.

Yeah, but, no.

Once they reported the second one, I said, hey, guys, quit fishing.

I know how many lives around your boat and you can't fit more than two, right?

Yeah.

You're not going not going to squeeze another one in there, right?

They had a tournament the following weekend.

So I think they kind of caught all their big fish the week before.

You rather turn them in for legacy longer than.

Yeah.

You know look I maybe they didn't win the tournament with those fish but they will have the chance to win about a $75,000 express bass boat.

Actually they took their they took their opportunity and made the most of it.

Oh man.

What what are any other kind of neat stories?

Weird stories?

Odd stories from from your time on the road chasing those fish?

Yeah, I think probably my favorite thing I've got to see time and time again is almost every time I'm.

I'm hauling a fish, I stopped two or 3 or 4 times to check on it.

Throughout the drive to the hatchery, and usually stop at a gas station, Park off to the side.

And, you know, if I'm just filling up gas in the legacy locker truck, not many people come and talk to me sometimes, but it seemed like every time on the weekend I'm picking up a fish.

I stopped at the gas station.

There's somebody with a boat filling up, and they see me stand up in the bed of my truck and open the tank, and it's like a magnet.

They come out like, well, you got one.

What's going on?

Can I see it?

And, you know, I'd let them up in the truck and they'd get to look at it and, you know, that was that happened 3 or 4 times where you kind of a rolling billboard once we got the wrap on the truck.

Right.

For sure.

That's an understatement to say.

The least.

Well, we're there, I know you you also went out for a few that when when you got there, they, they they didn't make weight.

Right.

Yeah.

There, there is I think two instances of that.

But 19 people had good scales and, you know, reported their catch.

And we were able to verify that and had had a couple scales that were off.

But, ultimately I was really happy with that ratio.

We didn't we didn't waste a lot of well, that's what I was getting mad.

I mean, not a lot, not many false alarms.

Yeah.

There was a couple people that said, hey, I got a real big one, and my scale doesn't have batteries or this or that.

And I said, find a scale like you got to weigh it and tell me what it is before I can send someone out.

Right.

No, we're not just going with eyeball weights here, right?

No, is is really cool though, that.

Well, that is due diligence.

And you went out to double check that these fish truly were ten or not, because we would hate for anglers to call in with an answer away and then turn out to be a 10 pound fish.

Right.

Let's not go, you know, pick it up or at least check as long as it's a ten on their scale.

When they reported it, we checked it out.

So what was the biggest fish we had?

1263.

It was number six.

So.

Okay.

Levi Lowe the second, that was okay.

The twin brother zone on the gray.

Yeah.

So we had two of the top five fish, top biggest fish were added to gray and two were at a Austell.

And then I think one was from Hamilton.

Okay.

At the top, I thought fine.

And it was there.

I mean, Austell had three.

Was there any other body of water that had as many.

Yeah.

So the gray had five.

I still had three.

Lower white oak had three and washed all had three.

Okay.

So pretty spread out there.

Yeah.

Was there anything did any of that surprised either one of y'all or were there any things, any fish that came in that were surprising for one reason or another?

I mean, I think three from our store was pretty surprising.

I think mill were not turning out more fish was pretty surprising to me.

And then I kind of expected a couple more, at least from Hamilton and March to.

But being in Hot Springs and seeing all those big fish come through tournaments, it kind of bias my perception of how many tomatoes we're now.

Sure.

But I mean, Hamilton is like the grape and putting out some big fish the last few years, and we actually had really the first, like our last year, our soft opening, if you will.

We had a had an 11 right out of, out of Hamilton.

That was a 1206 five out of Hamilton.

Okay, okay.

My bad.

And then we had the biggest fish last year was Griffin.

Ralph's 13.5.

For me it was Millwood right.

We how many we had just 122 for two, two for Millwood this year.

Yeah.

What about genetic stuff or you.

Look I, I've heard that there were some kind of surprising, things that have come out of that, talking with Shawn Lusk and Fisher the other day.

So we have let's see, I think we've got data back on a third of our fish.

We're still waiting for the results on the others.

But from this preliminary analysis, what we're seeing is a lot of our fish aren't pure.

Florida's, a lot of research done by Texas has shown that for a fish to get over 12 to 13 pounds, typically speaking, they're pure Florida.

No cars are pretty much mixed, like there's a pretty even split for each fish between largemouth and Florida bass.

Okay, so still enough to get trophy potential, but not quite enough to produce like true giants that we're seeing in Texas.

Right?

Right.

Well, look, all of these are giants, in my opinion.

Yeah.

Like I'd be happy to catch any of them.

Ten 1112 whatever.

What how do you know what's kind of beyond the anglers that you dealt with?

Because obviously they're all going to be really excited and really, really happy.

And, we're going to have a banquet down the road to, recognize these guys.

And, I don't think there were any gals.

Not this year.

Not this year.

But, you know, and draw for the boat.

And they'll get their replica mounts from Harpers Pure Country taxidermy.

But beyond that, I mean, what was your sense of how the bass fishing community received this program?

I mean, I think the proof is in the pudding.

If you kind of follow along on social media, there's most all of our posts have overwhelmingly positive feedback.

We we created this program because anglers asked us to.

So we didn't really expect it to be a flop.

Like they're the ones that wanted it.

And, you know, we we wanted to do it as well.

But, people are excited that we were able to follow through on that.

Yeah.

Eric, what was your kind of experience from what you're hearing and seeing?

I mean, I was pretty nervous for that first, like a Seal on purpose to go out just to see what public perception would be.

But same thing.

I I've been so happy.

On almost all of our legacy long career related posts, just the overwhelming support and positivity associated with the program, and hopefully we keep up the good work and it stays positive for 30, 40, 50 plus years, however long this program is going to go on.

Absolutely.

Well, you know, one of the things that I've heard consistently, especially during the donation period when we're talking about it, is that and, Mark Hedrick, who, does a radio show with me outside of Game and Fish and, one one of our outdoor Hall of Fame inductees this year, as a matter of fact, has made the comment off and that people were catching 10 pound bass in Arkansas all along.

But now that there's an incentive for them to share the news, we heard about it.

I mean, is that is that a fair, accurate assessment, you think?

Yeah, I'd say so.

I mean, there's a lot of people that kind of equate the catches this year with the program.

Like, look how well legacy lawmakers are doing, when in fact they've been we've been managing these lakes for years and they've been here this entire time.

We're just going to be able to build off that now and kind of leverage these genetics from these fish to stock better fish.

Right.

Well, I mean, and again, I think, I think there's a really good an important point to make.

Well, because everybody's like, wow, look what we saw from Legacy Locker.

But these are the fruits of fisheries management labor for many, many years in the past.

Correct.

And the resources that we are, able to manage in Arkansas, like we're very fortunate to have such great canvas to, to to work with.

Yeah.

And and you know, the, the interesting thing I think about and I've heard this through the professional bass fishing circuit through the years, the reason Arkansas has produced so many great bass anglers.

So got a little bit of everything, man.

I mean, you got the upland clear reservoirs, you got the, you know, the Arkansas River at its delta with, where it meets the Mississippi in the white and, you know, vastly different fisheries across the state with that.

I think it's interesting to see that these fish are coming from these very different fisheries to right.

Yeah.

I think that if you're an angler fish in Arkansas and traveling around, you're really fishing.

What you would expect to see in 4 or 5 different states, I mean, we've got all kinds of different, like you said, clear deep to the vegetation, to river systems.

I mean, you name it.

So, we're trying to grow big fish in all those.

Right.

Well, and the Legacy Locker program is designed to help us do that.

Let's kind of move into that aspect of what's going on right now.

I mean, you guys, before we sat down, you said, got a call just a few minutes ago.

And they got some, there's some eggs on a mat.

Yeah, yeah, we got the.

So when we left on Friday, it was kind of like, if you can imagine, like a middle school dance.

They had the legacy lockers in the back, the females on one side, a partition, and they added the males.

So they really need to kind of smell each other for a few days.

But, okay.

I imagine like a middle school dance, you've got the girls on one wall and the boys on.

Yeah, the grand march, right?

Yeah, exactly.

And, I think they pulled that divider, sometime this weekend and got a call on the way here that we had our first, spawn, so.

Wow.

Where'd you go through that process?

So, like what?

You know, because we just kind of like.

Yeah, we're spawning them at the hatchery, but what is that?

We all know what it looks like.

But, like, for our listeners.

What what that actually what what is the mechanics of that.

Right.

So so we've been manipulating temperature and and light in the indoor facility throughout this whole process trying to mimic, you know, what what is natural temperature as it's as the eggs are progressing.

Right now they've got the water, I think at around 70, and the light intensity is matching the length of the day.

That is basically the same as it is outside right at this point.

Yeah.

And we've had, you know, habitat structures and forage in with the fish the whole time to keep them comfortable.

And now the, you know, their eggs are full You know, with the, with the magic touch, with some of the hatchery guys, they're able to put, you know, spawning mats down, maybe a little habitat structure too.

And they, they're, they're wired to do their thing.

Tell me, tell them about the spawning mats.

What?

Because I mean, it's basically looks like a, Yeah, material and air filter it's made out of.

It's pretty much exactly like turf grass that you would see on a baseball field.

Okay.

So what we're using now, okay, a couple other agencies use kind of like a Velcro looking material, but I think what they're using at Joe Hogan is almost like turf grass.

Okay.

Yeah.

There's like just like a little like like a it's a mat in front of you.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Pretty.

Wipe your feet on.

Right.

Yeah.

It's weird to think that they've never spawn on a mat in the wild.

And, you know, there's a big raceway with the mat on the ground and they go straight to the right.

It's like a cat going to a litter box, right?

Right.

Yeah.

Just just hard wired to know that that's the spot where it's supposed to happen.

And then.

Okay, then what happens?

Like the eggs are there and, well, there's another step with the boys.

Come by and fertilize those eggs.

Yeah, yeah, but I'm saying after that.

What what do we what do we do at that point?

Yeah.

So they're going to, since we're doing mats this year, they're going to get those eggs off of the mats, grow up the fry indoors until they're able to swim around on their own.

And then we really need to stock those outside, so they can eat off water that has a plankton bloom, that is, you know, outside of the sun that's naturally occurring out there.

We don't have a big skylight in that building, but, once, once those grow out for like 45 days, roughly, we'll be able to stock those, you know, 2 to 3 inch long fingerlings back in the lakes that the parents came from.

Now, you never want to leave, especially largemouth bass, but many predatory fish people that.

Well, why don't you grow them out longer?

Guys, explain why we don't grow them out past 2 or 3in.

Yeah.

So if you work at a hatchery long enough, you quickly realize who's eating what and who.

You get a lot of these bull males that we call them usually, and they end up being their brothers and sisters and growing like three times the size of everyone else.

It's over time.

If they stick together for too long, they eat each other and that becomes a problem.

Yeah, we wouldn't be able to stock nearly as many fish with proven genetics to grow big if we if we grew them out very much longer, you got to get them outside to their lakes pretty quick.

What is that that timeframe that's going to be late May, early June.

We we'll harvest those ponds enough for these fingerlings and start stocking them and, well, where they came from.

And as well as perhaps some additional bodies of water.

Correct.

Right.

Well, we'll be stocking back to the broodstock females as soon as they're done spawning and healthy enough to go back to the wild.

We'll, you know, try to get with the angler and go release their fish back at the lake.

Let's get so, so like you don't want to keep them in, in those, you know, in this artificial hatchery environment any longer than definitely not.

We want to get them back out and back into their natural setting.

And, you know, obviously catchable fish for the Arkansas public for the rest of the year.

Including next legacy, longer season.

But once we get those stocked out and they're all out of the building, early June, we'll probably be stocking stocking fingerling bass, across the state and mostly going to be sending all those fingerlings back to the lakes that they came from.

But like you said, there may be, you know, certain instances where Lake Austell, we have too many fry that we.

Yeah.

Because it's not a very big lake.

We it would exceed the stocking rate for that lake.

So we may move some some of those to places like Conway that we're renovating and need you know.

Yeah.

Bass with good genetics stocked in the lake.

So okay.

You know, I had this question, talking to a chamber of commerce in South Arkansas, and I was there was a question about Legacy Locker and I kind of, you know, went through many of the things we've talked about and what we what we and it was at the very end.

So I was able to kind of like, yeah, this is how many we got.

Somebody said, well, how long does it take for a bass to get to 10 pounds?

And my answer was, well, that depends.

That's a long time, a lot of factors.

But just to explain what some of those factors are, what I'm trying to get at is like how long to where you may see one of these fingerlings produces like, you know, to to it may be a legacy locker.

We know that it happened in four and a half years in Lake Monticello.

Right.

But that may be a bit of an anomaly.

I think whenever you renovate a lake, you're going to have probably the best growth, on predator fish that you're ever going to get in that lake's history.

So seeing you know, Monticello push one out this year, it was a surprise.

We kind of thought next year we were going to see a bunch.

But to get one this year, that just shows you know, what happens when you renovate a lake and do everything right and stock the forage first and get the right genetics in there, and you can grow big fish pretty fast.

And then, on the contrary, in some of our other lakes, we did have one fish that didn't make it this year.

Right at the pickup.

It it was having some issues and didn't, didn't make it, but, we were able to age that fish and it was from Degré.

That was a 13 year old fish.

Okay.

For reference.

So the Monticello fish being either 4 or 5 years old or 10 pounds, and then this one being over ten.

Yeah.

And that's yeah, it just goes to show, I mean, right, I mean, we talked about the diversity of water in the state.

And I mean, you look at it, wash it all, some of those upland reservoirs, it just don't have the fertility.

It's something in the coastal plain or the dead and those lakes like what's all the gray Hamilton you're looking at?

Probably 12 plus years to grow a ten plus.

More often than not, I would guess 10 to 12.

Yeah.

But for a newly renovated Monticello or a Conway, you can get some fish at 10 pounds, maybe in 5 to 6 years.

It's that it's just remarkable to me that they're such.

I mean, you're talking about double, almost triple the amount of time it takes to fish.

And one of those less fertile, rocky substrate type reservoirs, as opposed to a place with lots of grass, lots of fertility and things washing into it in the case of Monticello, just this ask some of the Joe Hogan stuff how many times they've been back to Monticello, to Stockbridge, and they're they've got so much to eat as well.

So it's almost truly unlimited right now with that density of the bass population, they can eat as much as they want for however long they want.

And that's why they're so big.

Yeah.

Wow.

It's pretty again.

And there's a lot of science that goes into this.

It's not you know, we don't just go drop some fish in a well.

Yeah.

There's ideal stocking ratios for forage and predators.

Exactly.

It's all balanced out, and it's based on the size of the lake depth and all these other factors.

I'm assuming, Yeah.

Man.

Was there any was there any fish that I don't know that stood out above the rest?

Like, not because it was the biggest necessarily.

I know you had one with some kind of unique markings that you thought that had potentially been caught before.

So there were two fish this year.

It happened.

I only I think I only shared one of them with you, but two of the fish, had pretty unique characteristics.

Like in the photo, like their tail was cut in a certain way and had a dot in a certain place.

So I think it was fish six.

Like I see like or six I had, I had someone email me the night we posted that on Facebook and they said, hey, I caught that fish this summer and I'm sure of it.

And they sent it to me.

And you know, I don't have a genetic clip and I can't say 5%, but it lines up pretty well.

Totally was the same kind of tail deformity and everything.

Yeah, the spot the length was exactly the same.

The weight was a pound more, I think, at this time.

And, it had like some special black markings on its tail in the exact same place.

So.

Wow, really cool to see that.

You know, these fish are no telling how many times these these kids have been caught and released and taken care of throughout their lifetime by Arkansas anglers.

Yeah, that's the other remarkable thing.

I mean, you talk about catch and release angling and you really, it's not the solution everywhere.

And we don't want to give that false impression, but, it goes to show when you, when you, you know, especially through bass tournaments and things like that, that these fish can be enjoyed for many years.

You know, exactly what, you know, kind of putting a bow on everything.

Well, the, the, the hard parts over for you.

I mean, kind of you're you've been basically on call 24 hours a day, seven days a week for three months.

I'm family and and, all that.

Probably happy.

That part's over with.

Right to work phones.

Definitely turn it off on the weekends right now.

So, don't try to call me if you need anything.

Call Eric.

Right.

Well, you get, How about you guys?

Are you going to get any fishing gear?

And, the fisheries guys are super busy this time of year when everybody else is getting to enjoy the resource.

Y'all.

Y'all still, especially at the hatchery.

You still got your hands full right in there.

Yeah, I've got we've we've both got catching up to do on on getting out on the water for sure.

So, need to plan some trips and get out there soon.

Will you know where to go now?

For sure.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Lake Monticello, that's what I'm waiting on.

That's my next spot.

Well, I it was too much to resist for me.

I headed down there about 3 or 4 weeks ago.

Like kind of what I thought should have been right in the thick of the spawn.

But I think it might have been just a touch early.

They wouldn't lock down.

It's tough to time out.

Well, guys, thank you so much for coming in and talking with us, kind of giving us an update on where we are with Legacy Launcher, our first donation period in the books.

19 fish biggest 12.6 12.636 out of the gray, out of the gray, and to gray.

And what was that?

Five out of five from the gray?

The gray.

And then we had one in December.

That was before the donation drive.

The monster of 14 14.2, but unfortunately couldn't accept that one, but six behind that one.

Pretty pretty pretty solid showing.

For that lay you can pretty solid showing for our bass anglers around the state and for all of our bodies of water, as varied and diverse as they are.

Lots of fish coming from lots of different places.

It was fun to watch, you know, just from the from the cheap seats where I said, it was kind of fun to just kind of keep track of all that.

Well, job well done, gentlemen.

We'll lance it, Eric.

Nice.

We'll get Jeremy Risley back on here at some time.

He's our, black bass program coordinator.

And these guys, kind of.

That's our black bass team.

And appreciate the work y'all are doing.

What a successful first year.

And, looking forward to having more conversations about this in the future.

We appreciate it.

Thanks.

Thanks for having us on.

Well, thanks for coming on.

That's all the time we've got for this episode of the Arkansas Wildlife Podcast.

We'll talk to you next time.