Recently retired fisheries chief catching crappie at Sardis, stripers at Barnett
Two weeks into his retirement, Ron Garavelli is reeling in the benefits of his 28 years as Mississippi’s chief of fisheries.
Literally.
Last week, it was crappie at Sardis Lake in North Mississippi.
This week, it was cranking in a 7-pound striper at Barnett Reservoir.
“Not a bad way to start the next chapter, eh?” I commented, as I watched him bow up with the big fish Wednesday as we trolled the lower main lake on my pontoon boat.
“Not bad at all.”
Garavelli’s timing couldn’t be much better either, since his favorite two fishing trips in Mississippi are trolling for crappie at Sardis and for stripers at Barnett. Both seem to be peaking just when he finally has plenty of time to enjoy them.
“Oh man, he’s on,” Garavelli hollered. “I thought it was a stump but then he started shaking his head. It’s a good one.”
Ten minutes later, he had regained the 75 yards of line and I was netting his fish. We high-5’d, took pictures and iced the striper down. We would share it later, lightly pan fried with a light crust and topped by an Orange reduction sauce over pasta.
“Last night, I fried the crappie from Sardis for my daughter and son and their friends, about 10 in all, and it was fine,” he said. “Mighty fine.”
Asked which he preferred, for fun and for food, the crappie ranked highest on both.
“Especially when they are biting like they have been the last week,” Garavelli said. “We’ve been slamming them pretty hard trolling with Bandit 300s (crankbaits). We found a big school of keeper fish hanging on a ledge where it drops real sharp from 10 to about 20 feet and every pass we make we catch a fish or two on that sharp drop.
“There’s a lot of people up there trolling but they aren’t catching them like we’ve been. That one spot is producing a lot of quality fish. Instead of catching one or two or three keepers for every 10 fish like most folks, we’re catching only two or three undersized fish for every 10. The rest, man, they are slabs.”
Fittingly, Garavelli is enjoying two resources that he worked hard on over his nearly three decades as fisheries director for the Mississippi Department of Wildlife, Fisheries and Parks.
After working with striped bass in a short stint with the Tennessee wildlife agency in his native state, Garavelli helped push for a striper program here. Stripers are native to Mississippi’s coastal waters so it wasn’t that wild an idea. It wasn’t always popular either, since bass fishermen thought the emphasis should have been focused solely on largemouth.
Later, he helped introduce the hybrid striped bass, a cross between the also-native white bass and striped bass.
Garavelli knew he could manage both without affecting bass, since the stripers and hybrids his staff reared and grew in hatcheries were rendered unable to reproduce in the lab before they were released in the wild.
Most fishermen were slow to embrace the fish, but over the last decade the legion of striper/hybrid fishermen at Barnett has grown steadily. Most bass fishermen, and even some crappie fishermen, will have a rod ready just for the big fish when they start busting shad on the surface.
“How can you not like catching a 10-pound striper?” Garavelli said over and over.
His decisions on managing the crappie population at Sardis, and the three other North Mississippi Corps of Engineer Lakes (Grenada, Enid and Arkabutla), weren’t always popular, either.
The lakes are heavily pressured, both by Mississippi residents and by visitors from other states.
Why? Obviously, it’s because the fishing is so good.
“All those lakes and especially Sardis are some of the most productive waters for crappie in the country, but because of the combination of fishing pressure and the extreme range of water level of the flood control lakes, it’s a difficult task protecting those fish populations,” Garavelli said. “A lot of the decisions we made, involving the number of poles we allow, the minimum length limits and the lower creel limit, weren’t always popular but we always involved the public in the process.”
Over time, many of the fishermen on those lakes saw the benefits of the changes and actually asked for more restrictions to guarantee the quality crappie fisheries.
The result: “The fishing is so good at Sardis right now, I can’t wait to get back there,” Garavelli said Wednesday, as we docked at Barnett. “I’m going at least twice before I come back Saturday afternoon.”
Good for him.
He deserves it.
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