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.

My name is Trey Reed.

I'm assistant chief of communications here at the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission, and this is the official podcast of GFC.

Thanks for listening in or watching another episode.

We got a good one for you today.

I am joined by a fisheries biologist from Southeast Arkansas, Ryan Moser.

Ryan, welcome to the podcast.

Thanks for having me.

I'm good.

Well, it's good to have you.

You're, Are you district fishery supervisor or is that your title down there?

Yeah, that's what they tell me.

Yeah.

Basically, Ryan is the guy who oversees our fisheries management operations, essentially in the southeast corner of the state.

Is that fair enough?

Yeah.

I'm not going to get into, like, what district number it is and all that.

I don't know if anybody really knows that, but, what are some of the lakes in your area?

We're going to talk about one in particular today, but I want to just kind of cover some of the other stuff down there.

So some of the most notable stuff that we have, we've got Lake Chico, largest natural oxbow in the country.

But then we've also got the most of the Arkansas River, spanning from pool five, South Little Rock, all the way to the Mississippi.

We've got two game and fish lakes like Saracen and Cane Creek.

And then we've got another bunch of small oxbow off of Bob Bartholomew that are pretty popular.

Yeah.

Like, grandpa, small Grandpa Wallace.

And so those bring in a lot of anglers from Louisiana and out of state, as well as a lot of local crappie anglers.

Well, another lake that's not a game.

And fish lake, it is a lake owned by the city of Monticello is Lake Monticello.

And if you're a fan of fishing, if you're a bass angler, crappie anglers too, I think, it's been, Lake Monticello was built in the early 90s.

It was built like 93, 93 and started in 90.

Okay.

Well, I am a native of Pine Bluff.

I remember fishing it in the early days, and it was phenomenal.

It was, Florida bass were stocked there, and that was kind of a new thing at the time.

There weren't necessarily a lot of places where, where game and fish were stocking Florida bass at the time.

And of course, the, the lake famous for producing some big fish and some big crappie and large numbers of crappie, it's kind of cycled up and down.

And then there was a problem.

A few years ago, the city had to lower the lake level.

Yeah, it was plagued 2017 was when they begin to start having some issues with the levee, parts of it began sliding off in the lake.

And so they drew it down, inspected it, then were eventually told, if you want to fix it properly, the lake's going to have to be drained.

So in 2019, the city decided to drain it.

And then we took the opportunity of going in there and, you know, habitat were starting over.

And so that was kind of an opportunity to reset the clock.

Yeah.

We've talked on this podcast before about lake renovations and, what what that does, you know, obviously very high profile when we've discussed a number of times here, Lake Conway, our biggest single lake renovation project.

But we've done a number of these across the state.

Lake points at, White Oak Lake down in south of central Arkansas.

Lake Atkins was drawn down at 25 years ago.

But looking at doing another reset on that one here, pretty soon.

So it's basically a way to kind of reset the clock on the lake.

If you haven't seen those podcasts, or heard those, I would encourage you to go back and listen to them.

But the whole lake renovation process is interesting.

We're going to talk specifically about what that has meant for Lake Monticello, because it's a pretty special place, is it not?

Right?

It is.

And, you know, back in the day, it coined the nickname Little Lake for it.

And so, you know, for those of you that bass fish, everybody knows how special like fork is.

And so to have something similar to that in Arkansas is pretty special.

You know, Lake Fork in Texas, obviously, well known, throughout the region and probably around the country for producing big fish and Lake Monticello.

I remember hearing about, you know, 1,112 pound catches out of it back in the, you know, late 90s, early 2000, going down there in the spring and watching all the guys in their boats with their step ladders in the bow, so they could get elevated and sight fish, some of some of those, largemouth on the beds down there.

Yeah.

We've had some people talking about doing that, going forward.

But I think this go around, there's going to be a lot of trees that they're going to have to wade through and work.

When the lake finally reaches for ports, it's going to be at forest.

It's gone.

Okay.

All right.

Well, let's get into talking about some of that habitat work, because again, you know, you get benefits when you, drain a lake, the lower the pool.

So in some cases, not all the way down, but it enables the game fish to go in and you, you get some natural kind of, should maybe call it organic reset from.

We talk about the compaction of the soil in Conway.

That's been a big component of that.

But even that natural vegetation that grows up and that's like a flood of fertilizer when the lake refills.

But we actually went in and did a ton of habitat work.

Tell us about what some of that.

Yeah.

So habitat work began in 2020.

And so we had agency staff from all over the state that we did.

So so the problem with Monticello going back a little bit, there was a lot of farmland on the lake was created.

And so there's some some standing timber in the lake, some some fence rows.

But because there was so much farmland, there's large expanses of area out there where there's nothing.

It's just bare ground.

And so funny enough, historically, the fish on Monticello really like to sit deep.

So deep, and there's no habitat.

So, biologists went in, we did several types of, fish habitats.

We made natural brush piles.

There were about 200, what we call pallet A frames that were created.

And so it's just three pallets screwed together.

There were some, some artificial habitats, like Georgia tubes, which almost look like a big box.

We went in and did some, what you would call porcupine cubes, which are just real small timbers stacked together real tightly, provides good habitat for small baitfish and brown.

So and then, in the perfect time of the year, about August, a lot of staff went out and cut almost 2000 trees with a chainsaw.

That sounds like sarcasm when you say perf.

Exactly.

Yeah, perfect.

But it was dry.

And people were available, and so almost 2000 trees were cut and fallen into the lake bed for habitat.

And even since the renovation, we've continued to add additional habitat.

We haven't just stopped because the water's back in the lake.

Last year we added about 40 moss back trophy trees, to some of the old ponds in the lake.

So even though the water still in the like, the works not finished.

And so we're going to continue doing our part.

Keep it up.

Speaking of, what does the level look like now?

I know that it it has been really it's a small watershed.

Very much so.

So it has taken some time, to, to get the water levels back up.

I remember being out there in March, I think maybe early April during the spawn.

And it was like six ish feet down still at that point where, where does it stand now?

And we've had we've been in a drought, but we've been getting some rain southeast, not as much as some other parts of the state.

So we're kind of in a rain.

We're kind of in a dome when it comes to rain in the doldrums.

Yeah, but we're sitting at about seven foot low.

It was eight foot.

We've got some rain.

It's come up about a foot.

Okay.

But yeah, it's it's still pretty low.

A lot of the vegetation that that was flooded, is starting to die off, but everything from seven feet to where the lake should be is just continues to grow and grow while the light is still low.

When that does come up, that's going to.

That's not going to be a bad thing.

No, not at all.

No, we're we're kind of expecting to have, like, two new lake effects, because we've had, this first wave when the lake was full.

And then I want it refills.

You've got another layer of of more mature habitat that's getting flooded.

Well, there's been a lot of buzz in the bass fishing community, and I mean, even talk among our fisheries biologist.

I know Jeremy Risley, our Black Bass program coordinator, has been very excited about the progress of the lake.

And I know that even some of our staff and local residents in that area in southeast Arkansas, they've been fish in the lake for a couple of years now.

I mean, when you did officially kind of reopened to public access.

So the gates, the city opened the gate to the main boat ramp in the summer of 2024.

Okay.

Now, before two years ago.

Yeah.

So two years ago now, before that, you could slip a kayak in, you could slip a flat bottom in and pretty much have the light to yourself.

But that boat ramp was open 24, and water levels were adequate enough for launching.

And immediately people were catching, you know, on average, 3 to 4 pound bass.

Some would catch a six and a half pound bass.

And so for the last two years, we've kind of watched those sizes just jump up.

And now we're seeing for seasoned anglers on the lake regularly catching seven eights nines.

And then we've had the donation to the Legacy Logger program this spring in an additional one that was caught one over two weeks after the donation period.

Wow.

What is remarkable about that is that you were talking about and was it 2020 that you went in in August and did the the tree cutting in 2020?

So let's let's let's be clear about that.

Six years ago you were driving trucks and ATVs across the bottom of the lake, right?

That's right.

And here we are less than six years later, and it's produced a couple of fish over 10 pounds already.

What?

How that happened.

Right.

Well, so 2021 is when the gates were shut.

Okay.

So even a little bit sooner.

So really just give four and a half to five years.

And in the first so went in in 2023 and started forage.

Okay.

And so well, you stocked forage and then we went in again stock bass.

So really those fish have only been in the lake for about three years.

And so, those are phenomenal growth rates.

So we're seeing growth rates that are about twice of what the state average would be.

And that's really common for a new fishery with lots of nutrients.

You know we tell people that ask about, you know, well, how come I'm not catching a lot of fish and we tell them there's the fewest amount of bass today is there were tomorrow in the next day in the next day.

So each each year that goes by the amount of bass and lake is going to continue to increase.

And so when you have a fishery like Monticello where you've got a lower abundance of sport fish, but you have a lot of food, amazing things happen.

Talking about amazing things, you talked about some of the sizes of, you know, people slipping in a kayak or you know, that's or a flat bottom, you know, a small.

But we started to hear and not everybody was talking about it.

But you start to hear things like, hey, I caught this fish.

And I guess it was like the last year or two, like 24 and even into 25, the word starts trickling out.

And I think another thing that really amazed me as an anger, an observer standing back.

And you guys, as far as fisheries scientists, biologists that are managing these fisheries was not these fish weren't that long.

They're like little footballs.

Right?

I know how to use the term like these fish.

If you put them on a body mass index they would be morbidly obese.

They would be.

Yeah.

We've had several, you know, questions from anglers that, like the Florida bass, have smaller mouths and like, no, they're just very large fish for the young age that they are.

They're just fat.

They're they're not they're heavy fish.

They're not big fish.

Right.

And so like 19 inch fish that are weigh in 5 pounds and a half, 5 pounds.

Right.

Yeah.

These fish are built.

And so, you know, they're strong.

They fought hard.

You know, you hang in to a 4 pound bass at Monticello and it feels like you're fighting a hybrid on, like, the gray.

Wow.

So they put up a big fight.

And so.

But that's not the only thing.

You've got the bass that are growing big.

We've got red deer that are growing big.

And we've had several reports this spring of three, three and a quarter pound crappie.

Whoo!

Man.

So so that's a new lake effect that that is that kind of what's going on there?

Yeah.

That's expected.

Like you said, with the habitat, all the nutrients, we're hopefully on pace.

We, we try to stock 500,000 threadfin shad a year.

And I don't really plan on stopping that.

Okay.

We've also got other food options in the lake, like golden shiners, which are, you know, long, slender fish.

They're hotdog shaped.

They go down really easy.

And so, and a lot of times people, people say that the fish are hard to catch.

And a lot of the times those fish are full and happy and they have.

Yeah.

No reason to go chasing that.

They already got their meal.

They don't need to chase anything down.

We did something else that was a first for the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission with the, Titan Max stocking, at Lake Monticello.

Tell us what that entailed and what that means.

Yeah.

So in the summer of 2024, 22,000, fingerling titan Max bass were stocked.

And so that was a that was a group of fish from the Red Hills Hatchery in Georgia that, those are fish that were spawned from fish that the hatchery had determined had trophy markers and their genetics.

And so, they're looking at the DNA.

Yeah, they're looking at the DNA of the fish, and they're trying to identify characteristics of those fish that that maybe give them a better chance at reaching trophy sizes.

And so the goal of Monticello was to create a trophy bass fishery.

So this felt like a great opportunity to to try this out and to get some of these fish into the lake.

And so one of the things we tell everybody is, you know, genetics is, is another wrench in the toolbox.

It's not the only thing that'll make a fishery great, but it definitely can help.

Yeah.

And so hurt.

Right, right.

And so and, you know, in addition to those fish that were stocked in 24, they, they should be getting on up to size now.

They should be around three, three and a half, 4 pounds.

But created a lot of buzz around the lake.

You know, people wanted to come and catch these we call special fish.

And so while we don't exactly know, holding one in hand whether or not it's a Titan bass, it'll be really interesting to see throughout the next 5 to 10 years.

You know how that plays out.

With their growth, I think something significant to mention about that is that was the very first time that a public state agency had sourced these Titan Max from Red Hills to stock into a public body water.

Correct?

I mean, because basically this is an operation caters to, private lakes where people are really intensively managing.

And so this was really one of the first applications in a public body, what it was.

And that's not the end of our partnership, you know, going forward with the Legacy Longer program this year that it's first year, those fish that are being donated are being tested by Red Hills to see if our fish coming out that are ten plus pounds also possess those trophy markers.

Right.

And then we're also using them for our other lakes to do DNA samples to see, you know, what percent of Florida bass do we have in our other lakes and how we can use that information to improve.

Right.

With that reminds me, we need to get, Eric Knotts back on here to talk about some of those interesting genetics.

I know he shared some spreadsheets recently of, the breakdown of, Florida and large mouth in our the legacy lockers that were done.

And now we're also using male Titan Max bass to spawn with our legacy lockers.

Correct?

Yeah.

Well, very interesting.

We probably could get off on a tangent here about that, but we're we're going to stick to Lake Monticello.

So, you got the Titan Max bass, you've got this incredible growth of the fish that we started stocking in there, these Florida bass.

What's the future Lake Monticello look like?

You know, we.

So this summer, we had our first big bass tournament hosted by the city.

For a long time, tournaments were not allowed on the lake.

And then now it's it's going to be fairly regulated.

But there was a big bass tournament.

City was really happy about it, generated a lot of buzz and a lot of positive feedback from the community.

Right now, you know, the fisheries progressing.

Anglers are pretty happy.

Really.

Just waiting on rain.

Fill the lake.

Yeah.

Get get get that level back up.

Well, it seems, I don't know what this, developing El Nino in the Pacific is going to do, but I hear that that could change our, our, long term rain probability.

So maybe, maybe, maybe that will help us shift gears a little bit.

You're a fisheries biologist.

You manage Monticello, a number of other fisheries.

So you're you're dialed in, you're out there sampling.

You know what's in the lake, but you're also Abbas angler.

What excites you about Lake Monticello?

Take off your biologist hat and put on your fishing hat.

What gets you, jazzed about Lake Monticello?

You know, Monticello?

When I was a little kid, I grew up fishing the Arkansas River.

Grew up fish and washed out Hamilton.

So.

So being from central Arkansas, if you were to catch a fish in the 4 to 5 pound range in a day, it was a pretty good day.

It was a heck of a day if you caught more than one in a day.

It was a fantastic day.

And so, you know, going from from being used to fish in central Arkansas to, to now going to like Monticello, where if you don't catch multiple fours and fives in a day for that, like you've had a mediocre day.

And so that's really awesome.

You know, to be able to catch that many fish of that size in one day and potentially have the shot at a 10 pound bass.

But, I grew up as a diehard bass angler, would go on a few crappie trips every year.

So having a little bit of crappie fishing in, in my childhood, it's always fun to go down there and catch a two and a half pound crappie on a basler.

You mention red ears too.

And I mean, let's talk a little bit about that fishery, on Lake Monticello.

I mean, I mean, you know, bluegills are great, but red ears, you know, when it comes to a little spot, they seem to have more.

Yeah.

It's, we've seen some really nice quality red here, and we've had pictures after pictures and comments of anglers, you know, taking pictures of their side scan and spraying.

You know, like, I cannot believe the amount of shrimp beds that are on the lake.

Wow.

And, you know, we've had anglers catch and raider on crank baits and other bachelors by accident.

And we've had some that were pushing that 11 to 12 inch size.

Wow.

So wow.

And so the thing about Monticello too is, you know, it's known regionally as a Bass Lake.

Sure.

But the locals of Monticello and surrounding areas of the Crappie Lake and in the brims, kind of more of a hush hush.

Yeah.

You know, well, you might you might get some nasty emails about this podcast here.

That's for me, too, for that matter.

Yeah.

Now it is a special like, let's talk a little bit about tactics.

Like you, you kind of briefly alluded earlier to the fact that and I remember this back in, I call it the heyday of Monticello, another heydays coming.

I think we can, predict without too much fear of being wrong because it we're already seeing great signs pointing that direction, but that a lot of that bass it was deep, you know, especially down there near the near the dam, the earthen dam, you know, and, you talked about there not being a lot of structure in some areas of the lake.

So what how does it differ if you're going to if you were talking to an anger that had infested or hadn't fished it since, you know, 15, 20 years ago, and they're going down there, what are you what are you going to tell them?

What do you how do you how do you tackle Lake Monticello these days?

So for the first thing, for anglers that have have fished the lake historically, it's kind of funny to see a body of water that had fish in it.

It was drained and you started from scratch.

The fish now behave very similar to the fish did originally.

And so a lot of anglers that caught fish and found fish 20 years ago are catching fish and finding them in the very same locations that they did.

Okay.

And so for anybody out there that's already fished the lake, I would say go check your old honey holes out.

They say, don't fish the past.

But this is the case for this is a case where you could and so there's a lot of other features in the lake, with there being a lot of farmland.

There's a lot of old cow ponds that are in the lake bed that were there before.

And those are scattered in all the coves.

In addition to those cow ponds, we've put brush piles and pallet structures on the levees.

Generally those can be found by if you see a patch of standing timber in a circle, you've probably found a pond.

Okay.

And so those are areas where those fish like to sit on them brim like to spawn on top of the levees.

And so those are kind of little hotspots.

But really, we've seen a lot of our big fish just hanging out in the middle of nowhere, in the middle of the creeks, over 30ft of water, just sitting there like, are they suspended or are they relating to the, our, our some contours or some of our big fish have been sitting you know, the anglers have caught have been in 25ft of water about five foot deep, just hanging around, sitting out there in the open.

And so the new, the new Corky's of the dice baits that are coming out, anglers are throwing those at suspended fish that aren't, they're in deep water, but they're not deep.

I gotcha but you know, we've also had tons of people, and myself included, catching fish on the pallet structures and the brush piles we've put out.

And, when the lake was drawn down, we had to get down in the lake bed to do all this work.

And so there was a few roads that were created by the city to allow us to get down in the lake.

And so those will run off the dam into the lake bed.

And they've been pretty popular too.

I should note here one of the beautiful things about the habitat work and, fishing lakes around Arkansas.

And it's a game fish Lake or even some of the big core lakes.

You can find these habitat structures at AGF, SI.com.

You can download those GPX points straight into your sonar unit.

Nope.

Depending on what the, what the model is or they, it works with, multiple different brands.

And so I would encourage you to check that out.

We don't just put the structures out there and then good luck finding them.

We actually do, mark those locations every time one goes in and, share those with the public.

Yeah, we mark those.

And generally once we, you know, once we've done the habitat work that we've set out to do for the day or for the week, you know, within at least a couple days after that, we try to get all those uploaded to the internet.

And so, we've got a mixture of, you know, new places, places we've spruced up.

There's also the map on there that you can go on and just look at a map and see them, but there's a lot of data on there, so it takes time to load that up sometimes.

Ryan, I don't, I'm not a big, electronics guy.

I don't have forward facing sonar not criticizing you if you do.

I'm just saying, like, I tried to take advantage of when the fish were up shallow back in March.

And it felt like I was there slightly early, like I saw some fish cruising around, but they didn't seem to be locked down on the beds.

I know another friend who was in a different boat seemed to be catching fish that you couldn't see because they were in like five, six, seven feet of water.

They were on beds.

He was using forward facing sonar to find those.

What what do you think is the like this year?

When do you think like the peak of the spawn was?

I know you're going out there with electric fish equipment so you can get down this.

This year was very weird.

So we like to fish this year the same calendar date as we did last year okay.

And we missed it.

I call it, a seven and a half pounder off the bed in February this year.

Okay.

Everything was like a month ahead.

So and it kind of came in waves.

The water was really cold.

It warmed up really fast.

I think we had a wave of fish move up, do their thing.

But then come about March.

When we like to fish, we like to fish.

March 31st.

And almost every fish we call was spawned out.

Wow.

But then we had guys, in April that were were live scoping out deep, ten, 15ft deep where they could see a bass on a tree and a ball of fry, right there next to it in ten feet of water.

Okay.

So that's something about, you know, with all the habitat, all the cover that's in that lake, those fish seem to still prefer to be in deep water sometimes.

Okay.

Well, that that's, those are your fishing tips from Ryan Mosier.

Check.

Who is a guy in the know?

He manages the fishery and also spends a lot of time chasing those fish with the with a rod and reel.

Sounds like, look a little deeper.

Unlike Marcellus, who are kind of the take home message I'm hearing for me.

Yeah.

You know, look a little deeper.

And, and one other thing is draw shallower a little bit sooner than you might would think.

Okay.

You know, February, March.

Once you know, April rolls around, some of those fish are already on their way back out, so.

Well, it is an exciting time to be an anchor in Arkansas.

A lot of exciting things like renovation projects happening, the legacy locker program, and all the buzz and excitement that's creating among bass anglers like myself and not just the Bass Lake.

As Ryan has pointed out, great red ear fishery, great crappie fishery.

But whatever you're after, I would encourage you.

Now is the time when I say now, I don't care what month of the year it is just now get to Lake Monticello.

It is a great lake to enjoy.

Ryan, thank you so much for the work you do on that lake.

And thanks for joining us on the podcast.

Appreciate you having me.

That's Ryan Moser.

Check.

He's district fishery supervisor in southeast Arkansas, and we hope you will take advantage of the great opportunities happening at Lake Monticello and elsewhere around the state.

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

Thanks for listening.

We'll talk to you next time.