Management Successful

2007 Management Efforts Successful at Dale County Public Fishing Lake Ed Lisenby Lake

Dale County Public Fishing Lake is a favorite fishing destination in southeast Alabama for many anglers. The City of Ozark serves as lake manager and keeps the lake and grounds in pristine condition. In the past, the lake has produced excellent fishing. However, catch rates began to decline in 2004-2005, especially for bluegill, shellcracker and crappie. By the spring of 2007, fishing success had fallen to an unacceptable level. Rather than drain the lake and restock, fisheries personnel conducted a marginal rotenone treatment aimed at restructuring the fish population by reducing the number of recently hatched bass.

A low concentration of rotenone was applied right against the shoreline in May, 2007, before bluegill began spawning so that only the young-of-year bass are targeted. Rotenone is extracted commercially from the tissue of several South American plants including derris, timbo and barbasco. Rotenone is biodegradable, does not accumulate in the environment, and does not hurt other animals. Rotenone kills fish by disrupting fish physiology when it enters the blood and prevents fish from being able to exchange oxygen and carbon dioxide.

Bluegill serve as the main forage for bass in Dale County Lake. While largemouth bass typically spawn only once when the water temperature reaches the mid 60s, bluegill begin spawning in late May, and continue to spawn many times throughout the summer into early fall.  However, if there are too many small bass present, the juvenile bluegill are consumed before they grow larger than 1 to 2 inches long. In such a case, a marginal rotenone treatment conducted at the right time can reduce recently hatched bass, allowing high survival of the young bream. Since young-of-year crappie are usually not found near the shore in late spring, a marginal rotenone treatment will not cause a significant loss of these fish.

Sampling during the fall of 2007 revealed that the marginal treatment was successful in increasing bream. Also, along with bream, crappie abundance also increased. During the spring electrofishing sample the catch rate of bluegill was 143 fish/hr, as compared with catch rates of 740 fish/hr in the fall. Catch rates for juvenile crappie exceeded 900 fish/hr.

Those who prefer quality bass fishing should be pleased with the results as well. Bream are providing abundant forage for adult bass, and the bass are in very good shape. Relative weight, which is a measure of how much a fish weighs in comparison to an average fish of the same length, was very high for all adult bass collected in fall, 2007. Relative weight values of 95-100 indicate a healthy fish population.  Adult bass at Dale had an average relative weight of 106, with many larger individual fish expressing relative weights around 120 (very fat).

Next spring, bass fishing should be excellent for big fish, as many were collected in our fall survey in the 3-6 pound range. Anglers are still encouraged to keep small bass less than 18 inches to improve growth rates of larger fish. Ten bass may be kept daily from Dale County Lake with no restrictions on size. Anglers interested in catching big bass need to plan to drift large golden shiners (4-7 inches) this coming February and March. Bream and crappie are very abundant. During fall, 2007, the abundant year class of crappie were around 2-5 inches in length, and most bluegill were 2-4 inches in length. Although small, the abundant crappie should be big enough to catch by spring 2008.  Anglers are encouraged to keep any crappie that they catch.

For more information on the fish population at Dale County Public Fishing Lake, please contact the District VI Fisheries office at (334) 347-9467.   For operation hours and general information, contact the lake office at (334) 774-0588.

Many largemouth bass in the 4 to 6 pound range were noted during Fall 2007 sampling at Dale County Lake.

Spring marginal rotenone treatments at Dale County Lake resulted in large numbers of young bluegill and crappie by the fall.

The end product of large numbers of young bream and crappie: fat happy bass!!!