ATHENS, Texas—If you think all it takes to raise a baby bass is a momma bass, a poppa bass and a cozy pond, you’d be wrong. March is the month when catches of big bass peak in Texas, and it’s also the month when Texas Parks and Wildlife Department fish hatcheries begin raising the next generation of lunkers. Texas bass fishing is among the best in the nation, and no small part of the reason is the stocking of hatchery-raised fish into public waters all over the state. TPWD operates five freshwater hatcheries, but few people are aware of the complexity and artistry of the process of rearing fish. And at any rate, most people care only about the hoped-for result: a lunker bass rising to smash their lure. Making it possible for that to happen often enough to become almost commonplace is the job of TPWD hatchery managers and fisheries technicians. This is how they do it. The recipe for baby bass reads like a magic potion: acres of water, miles of plumbing, ozone, Astroturf, sodium bicarbonate, calcium chloride, sodium sulfite, cottonseed meal, phosphoric acid, the right mood lighting and a laser—not to mention two willing fish and anxious humans superintending the whole process. Hatchery bass spawn in response to the same stimuli as their wild counterparts: warming water and lengthening days in the spring. Temperatures from 59-71 degrees Fahrenheit are ideal. Juan Martinez, the biologist who supervises the spawning of Budweiser ShareLunker bass at the Texas Freshwater Fisheries Center in Athens, thinks that a rising barometer also helps trigger spawning. Thus spring storms may play a part. To maximize the effects of longer days, hatchery building doors are kept open from sunup to sundown during the spawning period. Martinez points out one other factor key to the success of the ShareLunker program, which spawns angler-donated 13-pound-plus females and stocks the offspring into public waters in an effort to improve the quality of bass fishing. “The program depends on the anglers,” he says. “If they catch a fish and keep it in good condition, it will probably spawn, so it’s very important for them to care for the fish properly when it is caught.” Guidelines can be found on the TFFC Web site (http://www.tpwd.state.tx.us/fish/infish/hatchery/tffc/sharelunker.htm#Tips). When a ShareLunker arrives at TFFC, ShareLunker program manager David Campbell gives it what amounts to a fishy physical and treats it for any apparent problems such as fungus or bacterial infections. It’s then kept in isolation for two days to be sure it is healthy. ShareLunker females are paired with three or 4-year-old males that are themselves descendants of prior ShareLunkers. The male fish spend the bulk of the year in outside hatchery ponds and are brought into the indoor hatchery for spawning. Size matters. The big females snack on rainbow trout while getting ready to spawn. A male largemouth that is too small may end up as lunch for the female instead of becoming her mate. As befitting fish worth their weight in gold, ShareLunkers are pampered. Water in their 475-gallon private tanks, drawn from Lake Athens, is kept at a constant 63 degrees and is treated with ozone to kill any potentially harmful organisms. Technicians add sodium bicarbonate and calcium chloride to the soft lake water to bring its hardness to 75 parts per million, and the pH is adjusted to range between 8-9. “The eggs depend on calcium to activate motility,” says Martinez, “and the fish tend to do better in hard water than in soft.” As the spawning season approaches in mid-March, technicians place “spawndominiums” and Astroturf mats in the lunker tanks. The spawndominiums are two-sided frameworks of plastic pipe holding black mesh. The Astroturf mat is placed inside the spawndominium. It’s not for the sake of privacy; bass simply like to have some structure to relate to, much as they would a submerged log or boulder in the wild. Bass are very territorial, and the male soon stakes a claim to the mat and begins trying to attract the female to join him by rubbing his body against her underside in a kind of courtship dance. If she likes the cut of his jib, she rolls onto her side and releases eggs, and he fertilizes them. The eggs fall onto the Astroturf mat, which are checked the first thing every morning. Technicians collect mats with eggs and rinse them in a sodium sulfite solution for about 20 seconds to release the eggs from the mat. Fresh water is then used to flush the eggs out, and they are run through a piece of equipment called a Jensorter, which uses a laser beam to count them. The 7,000-12,000 eggs from each spawn are placed in a separate cylinder called a McDonald jar, which has ozonated water constantly circulating through it. The eggs hatch in two to five days, depending on water temperature, and the fry are transferred to one-foot by eight-foot metal troughs, where they feed off their egg sac until they are big enough to swim, at about age 8-12 days. At this point the fry have one thing on their mind: food. While spawning has been going on, Tony Owens, the manager of the outdoor hatchery ponds, and his crew have been busy growing that food. After filling ponds with lake water, they add cottonseed meal, phosphoric acid and liquid ammonium nitrate to the water to fertilize it. The pond is then “inoculated”—zooplankton-rich water from another pond is added. The tiny organisms multiply at a tremendous rate, and by the time bass fry are added, there is abundant food for them to eat. The fry from each ShareLunker get their own private pond—spawns are not mixed. “We continue to fertilize the ponds two or three times a week and sample the fish to check their growth,” Owens says. “In 25 to 30 days the fry will have reached fingerling size, about 1.5 inches, and will have eaten all the zooplankton. At this point we stock them into rearing ponds.” In yet another aspect of this complicated dance, Owens and crew have also been growing millions of koi carp to just the right size to be eaten by tiny bass. The koi are put into rearing ponds about 10 days before the bass fingerlings are stocked at the rate of 100,000-150,000 per acre. “The whole trick is to get the bass the food of the right size at the right time to keep them from eating each other,” Owens says. The ShareLunker fingerlings are raised to 6-inch size before being stocked into public waters. Growing them to that size requires the rearing of tens of millions of koi carp for food, but the survival rate of the larger fish when released is much better than for small fry. Some fingerlings from each spawn are held back to be used as broodfish in the future. This allows TFFC to carry on a selective breeding program in which big bass genes are concentrated from one generation to the next, and it also ensures genetic diversity. At press time, the fish caught by Rickey Williams of Lubbock from Lake Alan Henry on Jan. 29 was showing signs of getting ready to spawn. Her mate was hovering just beneath her over the Astroturf mat. It has taken dedication, teamwork and more than a little luck to bring these two fish together to make more fish. And somewhere out there is an angler who will, someday, pull one of those fish from the water and rejoice over the fish of a lifetime, never realizing that the bass on his line is also on the end of another, much longer line, one that has touched the lives of many other fish and people.

AUSTIN, Texas – Walter Cronkite has narrated a one-hour video program about Texas water resources, which will air Feb. 3 on all Texas public television stations. “Texas: the State of Water—Finding a Balance” explores what’s at stake in the struggle to provide enough clean water for wildlife and the environment, cities, industry and agriculture. “I’m afraid that many Texans presume that there will always be plenty of water for all of our needs, but it’s important for all of us to take a closer look now,” said Robert L. Cook, executive director of the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department, which is producing the program. “Even if you’re not an angler or boater or have no connection with water resource development, this issue affects every single Texan,” Cook said. “There is still time to plan for a future with enough water for people and fish and wildlife. But we need to act responsibly now.” For the second time, the Emmy Award-winning television series “Texas Parks & Wildlife” is teaming with the state’s 13 PBS affiliates to broadcast original programming in prime-time on one night. The series’ first one-hour program about water resources, a partnership venture with KERA-TV in Dallas, aired May 29, 2003. “The greatness of Texas, its future, its well-being and its prosperity depend on its people understanding the vital role played by the wise and equitable distribution of its water supply,” said Cronkite, who donated his services to the program project. Cronkite, 88, was born in Missouri but moved to Texas as a boy and grew up in the Houston area. He still has family in the Austin area and returns to visit frequently. He was anchorman and managing editor of the CBS Evening News for 19 years, until 1981. He is still a special correspondent for CBS News, but now also co-owns the Cronkite Ward Company in New York, which produces programs for The Discovery Channel, PBS and other outlets. Cronkite recorded narration for the program at the “Texas Parks & Wildlife” TV series production studio while in Austin in November. The weekly half-hour series runs on PBS stations in Texas and some other states. Topics explored in the program include the controversial “rule of capture,” an overview of agencies and laws that regulate surface water and groundwater, river instream flows, water lawsuits, controversies involving environmental river flow permits, how water use affects endangered species and other aquatic life, water rights permitting, proposed reservoirs, water as a commodity, interbasin water transfers from one river basin to another, and how river inflows affect the ecological health of bays and estuaries. The program concludes with what people can do to help, including ways to conserve water, enhance groundwater recharge and retention, improve housing developments, and get involved as volunteers. The program is part of a broader TPWD public information initiative that began in July 2002 with the first of an annual series of special issues of the Texas Parks & Wildlife magazine devoted to water issues. The July 2005 special issue will focus on groundwater, in which some of the best writers in the state along with TPWD experts, will help explain what groundwater is, how it works, and why readers should care. The overall communications initiative also includes using the TPWD radio series, Web site and other media to get messages out there. The “Texas: the State of Water” 2005 communications initiative is funded in part by underwriting sponsor The Boone Pickens Foundation, A Communities Foundation of Texas Fund, patron sponsor Brazos Mutual Funds and supporting sponsors San Antonio River Authority, Brazos River Authority and Guadalupe-Blanco River Authority. The following stations (and cities they cover) will broadcast “Texas: the State of Water—Finding a Balance” in the listed cities on Feb. 3. Unless otherwise indicated below, stations will air the program from 8-9 p.m. Central Standard Time. * KERA: Abilene, Dallas, Denton, Fort Worth, Longview, Lufkin, Marshall, Nacogdoches, Paris, San Angelo, Sherman, Texarkana, Tyler, Wichita Falls. * KUHT: Beaumont, Galveston, Houston, Port Arthur, Texas City, Victoria. * KLRN: Kerrville, Laredo, San Antonio. * KMBH: Brownsville, Harlingen, McAllen, Mission. * KWBU: Waco. * KOCV: Midland, Odessa. * KNCT: Killeen, Temple. * KCOS: El Paso (8 p.m. Mountain Time). * KTXT: Lubbock * KACV: Amarillo * KLRU: Austin * KEDT: Corpus Christi * KAMU: Bryan, College Station

When It Rains, It Pours — Texas’ natural resources showed their potential in 2004, thanks to higher than normal rainfall across most of the state. The abundance of water created lush habitat conditions, setting the stage for near-record production among many wildlife species, particularly quail and deer. While hunters were enjoying the rewards of a bountiful season, anglers and park visitors saw newfound opportunities as rivers and streams flowed again and lakes, like Falcon, returned to normal levels. Rare Species Rebound — Several high-profile species of concern passed milestones in 2004, including record highs for whooping cranes and Kemp’s ridley sea turtles. This winter, the world’s last natural wild population of whooping cranes flew past the 200 mark, a landmark event for an endangered bird species that has come back from the brink of extinction during the past six decades. Throughout the summer of 2004, the world’s most endangered sea turtle returned to nest on Texas beaches in record numbers. Forty-one Kemp’s ridley nests were reported. Also encouraging was the change in status of the black-tailed prairie dog, which was removed from the candidate list of species considered for threatened status under the Endangered Species Act. Producing and Paying for Fish — The process to build and finance a new state fish hatchery got under way in 2004, with Jasper getting the nod as the site for the facility. To help pay for the new hatchery, the Texas Legislature created a Freshwater Fishing Stamp, providing the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department with an opportunity to reposition its suite of hunting and fishing licenses. The agency eliminated requirements for several specialty stamps and created license packages that better reflect a user-pay, user-benefit philosophy. Also making a big "splash" in a state fish hatchery this year was the donation of a new state record blue catfish to the Texas Freshwater Fisheries Center in Athens. The 121-pound behemoth was transported alive to the TFFC where it continues to be on display to the public in the facility’s aquarium. New State Parks Pass Proves Popular — More than 50,000 state park fans have purchased the new Texas State Parks Pass that went on sale Jan. 1. The new annual pass is similar in appearance to a credit card and is designed to be easier to use. The Texas State Parks Pass costs $60 for one card and $75 for a two card family membership. It replaced the gold Texas Conservation Passport. The new pass provides free entry to all state parks and historic sites for members and their guests, camping discounts and "extra perks." Birds Take Center Stage — The long-awaited debut in the Lower Rio Grande Valley of the $7 million World Birding Center drew dignitaries from state and local governmental entities and interested ‚birders‛ to the Oct. 23-24 grand opening. The WBC headquarters in Mission becomes the second of eight sites to open along the Texas-Mexico border from Roma to South Padre Island. Another first in the Texas birding community also came along in 2004 with the inclusion of a blind and visually-impaired birding category in the 8th annual Great Texas Birding Classic’s team competition, which was held in April along the central and upper Texas coast. The groups identify birds by sound instead of sight. The España Tweetybirds beat out two other teams in the category by identifying 40 species. A Texas birding team and a team of young birders from Illinois, Maryland, Michigan and New York tied for first, identifying 359 bird species. A total of 56 teams competed. Winning teams were awarded a total of $51,000 that they then donated to fund Texas coastal conservation habitat projects to benefit birds and birders. Golden Alga Spreads — A naturally-occurring toxin that has become deadly to fish in North and Central Texas expanded its range in 2004, hitting Lake Texoma, one of the states’ biggest lakes, and spreading into Oklahoma. Resource conservation agencies from Texas and Oklahoma are now combining efforts to research and monitor golden alga there. Since 2001, golden alga fish kills have occurred at two dozen reservoirs in Texas. Bighorn Sheep Hunt Giveaway Signals Species Comeback — Coincidentally, a pair of firefighters from different parts of the state were selected in a drawing of all licensed hunters in Texas to receive a complimentary desert bighorn sheep hunt. TPWD sheep census surveys in 2004 indicated record-high populations of desert bighorns and, in a gesture of appreciation to hunters whose license dollars have helped restore this majestic big game animal, the agency decided to give two hunts away. Justice Served for Nature — A decades old legal dispute was finally resolved bya mitigation settlement. The case stemmed from mercury discharge into Lavaca Bay by Alcoa and a sister company. Alcoa has already spent $40 million and will spend another $11 million for remaining cleanup. The company will also compensate the public for lost ecological and recreational resources, including adding land to a national wildlife refuge, restoring marshes, creating a new oyster reef and funding a series of fishing piers and boat docks around the bay. Earlier in the year, four individuals who wounded and killed several state-protected trumpeter swans were brought to justice after an extensive and exhausting investigation by state game wardens. Three of the five swans, which are a protected migratory non-game species, died and the other two are being cared for at an Iowa rehabilitation facility. The poachers involved pled guilty to 20 various game law violations and were assessed more than $17,000 in fines and related costs. San Jacinto Battleground Artifacts Uncovered — An unprecedented archeological project under way at the San Jacinto Battleground State Historic Site near LaPorte led to the discovery of dozens of battle artifacts such as musket balls, belt buckles and Mexican coins. A display of some of the discoveries, which already are shedding new light on the decisive 1836 battle that led to Texas’ independence from Mexico, highlighted the annual San Jacinto Symposium held at the University of Houston April 23. The archeological project is the precursor to the implementation of the first part of a $47 million master plan for the park, which calls for restoring the battleground to its 1836 appearance, a new Visitor’s Center and Museum, among other improvements.

The holiday season is a good time for reflection. A time to be grateful for all that we have. A time to give just for the good feeling we get from giving. One of the most important things that we all can be thankful for, after good health and good fortune for ourselves and our families is this great land we live in. From coast to coast it is filled with the most wondrous places. Our beautiful mountains, oceans, rivers, streams and lakes that we too often take for granted are truly things to be thankful for. They are great gifts placed here in our land to be enjoyed by all. Along with these great gifts comes an important responsibility to care for them and preserve them so that future generations can enjoy the pleasures they provide us all. Many of our great rivers and lakes, once on their way to becoming “Toxic Reservoirs” full of “Mutant Aquatic Lifeforms”, are now well on their way to being restored to the condition they were a few hundred years ago when our ancestors settled this great land. The result of this turnaround is largely due to the efforts of a relatively small group of people called conservationists. Not the extremist groups, concerned with protecting some tiny insect from extinction, but ordinary folks with good common sense and, thankfully, a very high degree of responsibility, who have come together to focus attention on the care of our natural resources. One doesn’t have to have been around too long on Lake Conroe to remember the days when the water was so clear that you could see your toes when you stood or swam in it. That was before “Mother Natures” natural filtration system was removed. Today that wouldn’t be possible even if you were 6 inches tall. “Remember the Alamo”, huh! “Remember Lake Conroe”. Remember when it was easy for the occasional fisherman to catch a bass. One doesn’t have to look to far, less that 100 miles, to our north south east or west to see fine examples of what proper conservation methods can do to preserve the pristine cleanliness of our lakes that are teeming with fish that can still be caught by the occasional fisherman. Properly managed these great reservoirs still provide the beautiful clean waters and abound with aquatic life even better than when our forefathers came to this country. Give your children, grandchildren, great grand children, and so on, the gift of a beautiful and bountiful place to enjoy. Do you part if it’s only by giving something to those who are working hard every day, on a voluntary basis, to keep our lakes and rivers clean in the State of Texas. Texas Black Bass Unlimited is one such organization. Dedicated to the preservation and conservation of our great lakes and rivers this group of volunteers is working every day, doing things to improve and enhance natures resources. Ordinary hard working every day Joe’s like you doing what they can to make it better for us all. “Remember Lake Conroe”. Let’s put it back the way it was when you didn’t have to be 6 inches tall to see you feet or “Angler of the Year” to catch a fish. Give a friend a membership for Christmas. For information call 713-580-1469 or 214-381-0748. Subscribe to “Our Inland Fisheries” magazine today. You can make a difference.