A trip with the electro-fishing team can be educational, entertaining
My first experience with an electro-fishing boat was over 25 years ago, and the memory of that day still haunts me.
It was shocking to find just how pathetic I was as a bass fisherman.
Back in the mid 80s, the Mississippi Department of Wildlife, Fisheries and Parks had just started regularly using shocking boats to collect fish for its samplings. The technology had been around for several years, but the agency had just developed the protocols for sampling methodology.
The idea that a non-lethal tool could replace rotenone sampling, a poisoning process, which killed fish, was obviously a good one.
When officials brought one to Barnett Reservoir they asked if I would be interested in doing a story on it. I jumped at the chance.
“What would be interesting,” suggested Jack Herring, then the chief of fisheries, “would be for you and one of your fishing partners to fish an area, see what you catch and then see what was really there after the shocking boat makes a pass.”
Neat? Yeah.
Fun? Yeah.
Humiliating? Fraid so.
My buddy John Alford, one of the best jig fishermen I know, and I pulled up to a row of three stumps, a big one in the middle flanked by two smaller ones, along a bank on the upper river area of Barnett Reservoir. We worked the stumps in a 10-yard stretch pretty good for 30 minutes, and John pulled a 2-pounder off one on a jig and I caught a 13-inch bass on a spinnerbait.
That was it.
Then came the boat, with its tentacle-like cables down coursing a steady low-voltage charge through the water.
What we witnessed led to a new nickname for the area — The Shocking Stumps.
It probably should have been The Shocking Truth.
Fish started flying up on the surface, with the biologists at the front rail scooping them up inlong-handled nets. The men scooped about five fish off both small stumps before the boat backed out and started moving up on the big stump in the middle.
“Dang John, look at that,” I said, as a whole school of largemouth suddenly thrashed on the surface.
“I’d rather not,” Alford said, laughing. “That hurts.”
No kidding. There were so many fish that the biologists could only net about half … and they netted over a dozen. Included were two fish over 7 pounds, several more between 4 and 6 and lots of other keepers.
The biologists laughed when they pulled up beside us, asking what we thought.
Out of about 10 words I said only one should be printed here.
“Humiliating.”
***
Fast-forward three decades, and the electro-fishing boats are now commonplace. Biologists of all kinds — college researchers, state and federal agencies, and private fisheries management companies — use them.
“The electro-shocking boat is just one tool we use, but it is an important one, in producing a management program for a lake or pond,” said Scott Kirk of Southeastern Pond Management’s Mississippi branch in Canton. “It provides us with a sampling that becomes the base for designing a plan to give our customers, which includes harvest strategies, fertilization and restocking.”
On a recent trip to a private subdivision lake in Central Mississippi, Kirk and an assistant collected a variety of bass, bream and catfish. Each was counted, measured by weight and length, and released alive. Only one was killed, and that was a 13-inch bass that was sacrificed so that it could be aged.
“It’s a year old, which is what we are looking for,” Kirk said, studying the otolith from the fish’s inner ear. “In a private lake like this, where growth rates should be at a maximum, we look for about a pound a year or 12 to 13 inches in the first year. That’s good.”
The boat is not just a science device; it’s also entertaining.
“Whenever we take the boat to a lake, like at a subdivision, we get a lot of attention,” Kirk said. “People come out and watch us and are amazed at how it works and the fish we shock up.”
Kirk is quick to tell the inquisitors that the boat by no means gives biologists a complete picture of the lake.
“It doesn’t get as many fish as you’d think,” he said. “It varies from lake to lake and actually region to region. Some waters are more conductive and can transfer the charge better.
“Plus, we can only shock fish to a certain depth, usually five or six feet. Anything deeper and the charge does not reach it.”
Garavelli used a trick to reach big stripers when he was a biologist in Tennessee and needed big fish from the Holston River to use as brook stock.
“What we did was modify our cables to direct the charge deep,” he said, noting that his experiences were in the late 70s when the technology was in its infant stages. “We used stainless steel cables, and we got long ones, like 10 feet or more. Then we put plastic sheaths around the cable for the first eight feet so that the electricity couldn’t hit the shallow water. The full charge was taken 10 feet deep.
“And let me tell you, it would knock the stew out of those big stripers. They were 20, 25 and even 30 pounds and they came up. It was crazy. But they were OK and we were able to use them as brood stock. We did the same thing with big flathead catfish.”
The original shocking boats involved generators linked directly to the cables, which are extended in front of the craft by non-conductive fiberglass poles. Now, Kirk said a control box between the generator and the cables is the brains of the outfit.
“About $10,000 right there,” he said, pointing to the box under the steering wheel of his center-console boat. “It is adjustable and it can regulate the charge needed.”
***
Over the 25-plus years since my first humbling experience with the electro-fishing boat, I have spent several days watching biologists shock fish. I’ve seen some remarkable stuff.
— Like a 12-pound bass and two 8s collected off a small pile of brush in a state park lake, all scooped in one net, which broke halfway up the handle.
— A 30-pound carp taking a charge and turning into a drag boat and leaving a huge v-shaped wake across a lake … all the way across the 200-yard wide lake.
— And, a 3-pound bass skyrocketing about 10 feet out of three feet of water and landing in the open livewell of the shocking boat. “Too bad we’re just trying to get crappie,” said former U.S. Forest Service biologist Larry Clay, who reached to get the fish, only to have it jump out of the livewell and back in the lake. “Don’t think it hurt him a bit. Do you?”
If you get a chance to see a shocking boat in action, take a few minutes and watch. It’s entertaining and it’s educational. You can learn where fish hide, the different kinds of structure they relate to, and where they like to congregate in schools.
But, don’t be foolish and accept a fishing challenge.
The electricity will beat you every time.
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