Mukhtar was a surprise; a person “not from around here” with what I discovered to be an English accent. It didn’t take long to see the passion he holds for his job or learn that he was knowledgeable and very curious of the area seeing that he had only been in Angelo for 8 months. His easy personality played well with his energy and I quickly knew that the reader of the interview would gain something.
I immediately recognized in John the “something” that an experienced fisherman has. Like a veteran pilot or such, John has the easy confidence in his knowledge and skill. John knows the area and it was soon apparent that he had been fishing he area for a long time.
I asked the biologist team to identify themselves for the podcast. They introduced themselves as:
John Ingle, Fisheries Technician (JI)
Mandy Scott, Fisheries Biologist (MS)
Mukhtar Farooqi, Fisheries Biologist District Supervisor (MF)
WTJB: (to JI) What is the technician position entail with TPW?
JI: More or less to help assist the biologist in their research projects through out our district.
WTJB: Sounds like you’re a professional fisherman?
(laughing)
JI: No. No. Wanna be. We’re mostly geared towards maintenance and upkeep. We perform general surveys on the fisheries throughout our district.
WTJB: Great! What about the biologist position? What does the position entail?
MS: We’re responsible for monitoring the fisheries in our district. We take a look at them through monitoring surveys. We do special surveys of our fisheries and what we can do to improve them. As far as things we can do, we can do stocking, setting regulations, and habitat improvement. We are the ones who make the decisions on what to do to improve the fishing in our district. Really, I want to add in that we have slightly different roles, but all 4 people … we really work as a team. You know, just slight differences in our job descriptions but we really are a team.
MF: That’s right. Our aim is to make fishing better. We are 4 people in one office trying to manage a district and we have to work together as a team. To get that accomplished, we might have separate assignments to accomplish, but when it comes to looking after the district and trying to manage the fisheries we operate as a tightly fit unit. Each one of us independently can make decisions as the situation arises.
WTJB: On the note of the surrounding fishing conditions, what are your opinions, fact or opinion, on the conditions of the local fishing in the area?
MF: Well, there are 2 ways to look at that. One is from our survey point of view based on the surveys we carry out which will be electro fishing which is mainly for shoreline species and there’s trap-netting for crappie, gill-netting for some of the open water species like catfish, and Creel surveys where we interview anglers. That aspect, where we conduct Creel surveys, and where we fish ourselves we try to mesh the two with our scientific sampling. That, I think is, to get the overall sampling is what we like to do. So, when you ask us that question, we can give you from what we find in our surveys and we can give you an answer on what we can find on our Creel surveys where we interview the anglers and also from our experiences from our fishing. We have differing levels of experience on that. From an angling point of view I would defer to John (a general laughter ensues) and then all of us can chip in from a scientific point of view. Meshing the two together can get the overall picture because if is fine for us to say “From our sampling we found this” but it has to translate to what the anglers are catching.
WTJB: OK. (To JI) Any opinion on how the local fishing is right now? What are you seeing?
JI: Right now, most people are targeting crappie; deep water crappie. Twin Buttes has really come on here lately. The water temperature is dropping down. It was 50 (degrees) last week and today we took water quality samples at 8:00 AM and it was about 48 degrees so those crappie are moving deep on the river ledges and channels. You can probably catch them on about 25 feet or so on Twin Buttes. Nasworthy is probably pretty decent right now. They are moving up to docks, brush-pile docks with access to deep water. Probably right now Twin Buttes, angling wise, is probably our best crappie lake unless you go to Ivie. We have a lot of people who fish at night on Ivie. That's a little rough on me to go out there.
MS: I was out there Sunday for a Creel Survey and I asked the marina workers specifically about crappie fishing and they said that it was pretty slow right now.
WTJB: What is a Creel survey?
MS: It’s when we go out … When we go to Ivie, we have what is called an Access Creel Survey. When we are out there and interviewing the anglers about their fishing trip.
WTJB: OK!
MS: We find out things like how long they have been fishing that day, what they are fishing for, what they caught, released, and how much money they have spend. You know, the economic impact of their fishing day. It’s one more impact of their surveys.
MF: Right. Sometimes our surveys show that perhaps, let's say crappie fishing, should be good based upon what we find but when we interview the anglers we might find that they haven’t been catching as we thought they might and vice versa. They may do well sometimes and it is not showing up on our surveys. What’s interesting on the crappie is what I was going to get John’s opinion on OC Fisher because when we did our survey just last week we set 10 trap nets out there and we were surprised on the high catch rate
MS: There was a great crappie catch rate out there.
MF: Size wise it’s not like there were a lot of small fish. Basically up to 12-13 inches but a nice size range, nice color, and a lot of them. Out of those 10 nets there was maybe 1 that had a low number of fish.
WTJB: Any advice on location?
MS: I remember one of the nets up the river, up the creek was really good.
WTJB: You guys might want to keep that secret.
MS: Noooo. It’s our job to disseminate that information.
MF: It’s not that we are trying to be cagy. It’s that this was one of the better sites.
JI: Just up the Concho River there isn’t nothing but some mud banks and some flooded terrestrial in there; nothing to really attract them but I guess the shad moved up there and they are just following them. All the shad are in the creeks where the water is a little bit warmer up there. Really, there is nothing really to attract them up there. Come spring time it should be tremendous fishing up the shore line back there. On the angling side, I haven’t been out to Fisher in a year or so. That was an eye-opener to all of us on the number of crappie we did collect. Most of them were of legal size so to speak.
MF: So, from our sampling point of view things are looking good. Now we hope to see if the anglers can tap into that.
WTJB: OK. Let’s talk bass. How are they looking in the local area?
JI: Bass fishing, probably Twin Buttes again. We have had a rise in water level since ’04. We have a lot of flooded terrestrial and we did some back to back stockings the last 2 years so the fishing has been tremendous the last 2 years. We are able to maintain our water and everything so fishing should be good our there. Hopefully, we can get some more water into the lake level out there.
MS: Speaking of that, with more anglers going to Twin Buttes we are hoping that Nasworthy, which had been suffering for a few years since Buttes was so low and people were not fishing there, that we think that there was so much pressure on Nasworthy that it was pressing the bass fishery there. Hopefully, with some of the pressure being relieved, we think it is, we are hoping to see the bass at Nasworthy improve. Also, OC Fisher we hadn’t heard anything good about the bass fishing out there. Our electro fishing sampling was better than I expected. We didn’t really catch that many really big fish, but the fish that we caught were really plump and healthy. It was a better sampling than we expected.
MF: There is an incredible amount of bait fish our there, too.
MS: Yes.
WTJB: When we are talking about the Concho feeding into Fisher, is this going to be the best location?
JI: For bass fishing?
WTJB: Yes.
JI: Anything with some kind of structure on there. Really, it is sort of barren out there with a lot of gravel on the bottom. There is some little rock bluffs and such. But anything with like a point of contact like a varience or an edge or something will hold some fish because we did have a lot of, when the lake was at 2 to 3 percent, a lot of terrestrial vegetation grow up on the lake bottom and then we caught so much water. Really, during our electro fishing we could only sample the edge. We couldn’t go back and sample 200 – 300 yards back there to see what was back there. There is so much flooded terrestrial that it is hard to sample. It’s hard to run, say, a spinner bait or a crank bait back there. More or less people are fishing the islands, so to speak. There are some tree lines running the channel that you could fish. Just look for some kind of structure right now.
WTJB: Pretty much the same thing for Twin Buttes or Nasworthy if you’re looking for bass?
JI: Twin Buttes probably, yeah. You could really fish the river channel because it was so low that the terrestrial vegetation grew up on there that you can fish 25” along the river channel and there can be like 10’ of salt cedar along the edge. They are just hanging on that edge. You could fish through there and catch some fish. Nasworthy is going to be a little different with a whole lot more bull rushes, cat tails, and even some coon tails that will make you change your pattern. During Twin Buttes previous summer we had a lot if aquatic vegetation that you could throw top waters over and do pretty good. This past year, we had a bout of blue-green algae that caused us to loose a lot of our vegetation. That hurt some of the fishing out there. Some people are use to fishing the flats with the coon tail and we lost that so the fish had to relocate so to speak. You have to just go out there and find them. Once you find them, you could catch 15-20 of them then you have to go find another spot. Nasworthy should be coming on and Mandy was talking earlier about the pressure on Nasworthy and we were actually doing Creels a few years back. That was really the only lake we had going due to golden algae on Lake Spence, Moss Creek, and Colorado City. A lot of people from Midland and Odessa would come down and they wanted to fish so bad that they would end up harvesting everything they were catching. That took a lot of pressure off Nasworthy when Twin Buttes came on. Hopefully Nasworthy will start coming back, so to speak. I cannot remember how our sampling on Nasworthy went this year.
MS: Nasworthy? I cannot recall either. It must have not been to great.
MF: It wasn’t particularly impressive, but it was OK and there were signs that where we did come across some big fish they were in good condition. In fact, some larger ones managed to evade our electro fishing field. Sometimes they are on the edge of the field and they manage to evade the survey. From what I remember, there were some larger fish that we just couldn’t catch. In fact, Nasworthy is one of the lakes that John predicted would product a Share Lunker under the right conditions. He actually did that in an article that he did for the Standard Times.
JI: During our spring surveys out there we have run across one bass that is over 13 pounds easily. She seems to be out there year after year.
WTJB: What can local fishermen do to help you here at TPWD?
MF: On a day to day basis, just by talking to us about reports on how their fishing went.
WTJB: You’re asking for it. There are people like me that will pester you to death.
MF: No. We don’t mind. It’s got to be a two way process. We are providing a service. We want to know, you know, from the anglers how things are going, if they find things peculiar, or if they have any questions. I think that the exchange of information is one of the best things we can ask for. We want to be approachable down here on 3407 South Chadbourne street. They can get us by phone at 651-5556. We want to make it a two way process as much as possible rather than us giving out survey results and news releases and things like that. We want to improve our service by taking into account what anglers are thinking and how their fishing is going. Hopefully, that way we can get to our goal of making fishing better. Everyone has to take part.
MS: We would like to hear some feedback on how they (anglers) think we are doing. The feedback, like he was saying, is important to us. We want to make sure that we are doing the right thing because the anglers are our customers.
MF: We are interested in water body records, too. The Angler Recognition program, too. Angler’s may not know that they can come to our office since we have certified scales. More often than not, during regular business hours, we can be found here. All of this helps to promote the fishery. When someone looks at a fishery, someone is looking at a different aspect of the fishery. They can come here and see how the fisheries are performing.
MS: One other thing that some of the anglers can do to help us is to abide by the regulations; not just make sure they are not breaking the laws but harvest tome fish now and then. We have found that regulations don’t do any good if nobody is harvesting any fish; especially with the bass. There is a very strong catch and release ethic out there. People are very conservation minded which is great, but it has gotten to the point that in some lakes especially trophy lakes in east Texas people are harvesting no fish making it to where the regulations are doing no good.
WTJB: I would have never anticipated you saying, "Take the fish, please."
(laughter)
MF: Well, in specific cases you have slot limits, maximum length limits, all of which are designed with the harvest in mind or to protect a certain size range. Harvest around it and allow for some trophy fish to be taken. If everyone is into catch and release and, like Mandy said, there’s no harvest in some reservoirs in the USA you could have over 90 – 95% who are doing catch and release on lakes with regulations. Well, those regulations will not work. They are put in place to solve a particular issue and they depend on people cooperating. Although you may thing catch and release is going to be beneficial, there is times where we want people to harvest. If you are only taking a few, that’s going to help.
WTJB: Is overpopulation an issue right now in the surrounding area?
MS: Well, we did have an issue at OH Ivie a few years back. We were starting to see a growth problem with the large mouth bass. We suspected that the prey base was not adequate to support the large mouth bass. We needed to see a harvest of the smaller, legal sized large mouth bass.
WTJB: (to the audience) You heard it, guys!
(laughter)
WTJB: One of the questions I ask is who in your opinion are the 3 best local fishermen?
JI: One, off hand, would be Wendell Ramsey. He’s a tremendous bass fisherman and the outdoor writer for the Standard Times.
WTJB: His name comes up a lot!
MS: I know. Right?
JI: He’s one of the better bass fishermen. Another one would be Jim Brown. He’s a big-time bass fisherman, but he’s also involved in youth events trying to get kids involved in the fishing. He’s with the federation and he’ll actually put on a class like “Bass 101” to introduce families into fishing. Another one would be Sam Kill. He’s a local guy that builds crappie jigs. I see him out on Twin Buttes all the time and he’s just hammering fish left and right all the time. That would probably be my 3 around here.
WTJB: 2 of those names have actually popped up before.
MS: Most of those I know I kind of know through John. One other guy, the guy I always see standing up and winning tournaments is Paul Montelongo. My husband fishes the Concho Bass Club Open every year. I always go and watch the weigh-ins and it seems like Paul’s always standing up there winning something. He fishes a lot of the open tournaments and wins a lot of the times.
MF: I’ve been here 8 months so I haven’t had time to assess so I’ll go with what they said.
WTJB: You bring up something that’s interesting; the local fishing clubs. Are they working with you at all?
JI: Yeah, somewhat. We usually have a presidents meeting once a year with the bass club presidents where we go over our data and any questions they may have. If we ask them they are usually more than willing to help us out, but they have their youth events going on and we have ours. Really, there’s a lot of conflict between our work schedules and their work schedules and tournaments and stuff like that. I do feel like we can call on the bass clubs anytime and they would help us out.
WTJB: What bass clubs do we have in the area?
JI: The Bass Federation of San Angelo, The Angelo Bass Club, The Concho Bass Club, ..
MS: The Bass’n Bunch
JI: The way the economy has been this past year with the price of gas and low lake levels with the fishing being really tough a few years back we lost (bass clubs). I use to be in the city bass club. We just went under, more or less. We probably lost some fishermen due to that. Hopefully, they will be coming back with the lakes coming back so to speak.
WTJB: Alright. Last question and I have to ask this one; what do you estimate to be the biggest fish in the local lakes and where are they?
JI: Catfish Charlie!
WTJB: (laughter) Bass, John! We’re talking bass!
JI: I’d say Nasworthy. During our spring electro fishing she looked fifteen pounds. I’ve actually caught 2 tens put of Twin Buttes. OH Ivie is going to be tough to beat. We’ve had several share lunkers coming out of there.
MS: We’ve heard the results of open tournaments the past 2 years have had several over twelve pounds. Really close to share lunker the past 2 years.
MF: From our point of view when we go sampling we don’t actually catch many of the big ones. Our gear is not conducive to catching the big ones. That’s why we rely on the anglers to tell us where the big ones are. Having said that, like John would say, we do come across a large one like the one at Nasworthy. In those instances we can point that one out but in most instances it is the rod and reel anglers that can tell us where the fish are.
WTJB: Great! Are there any plugs you want to put is like the Neighborhood Fishing Program?
MS: Yeah! The Neighborhood fishing Program is a state-wide program. We have a spot in San Angelo on the Concho River between Irving and Oakes Street where the Celebration Bridge, River Stage, and all that area is and that gets stocked with fish every 2 weeks with fish that are already good size to catch and eat. We have catfish going in from April to November and then rainbow trout the other months. It’s a fantastic program. All sorts of people are enjoying that program with their families hopefully introducing their kids to fishing. We just hope that program expands in popularity.
MF: While this is not a program, this could become one is the “The Your Biologist or Biology Staff Member Fishing” program. A lot of times we don’t get to go out and fish. We do a lot of survey work, but sometimes we don’t get the chance to go fish that often. A lot of things can be accomplished with something like this where we go out with a local angler and we don’t have to catch a lot of fish or anything, we just talk to them and learn about their favorite lake and what they like about it. We want to see their favorite techniques. They do not have to show us their honey holes or anything. I think that way we can increase the communication. There was an article written in American Fisheries Society magazine some years ago which said that fisheries resource managers and biologists should go out fishing more and getting to know our lakes from the point of view of our anglers. If we can do this with another angler, one thing that happens is that we increase communication and secondly we can feed off that. For example, we have an article in the Standard Times Sunday of every month and as long as the angler doesn’t mind we could write about a fishing trip somewhere along the lines of what Wendell does. That would do a lot for the 2 parties to understand each other and promote fishing in general.
We wrapped things up from here. I really had a great time getting to know the people who make up the TPWD Biologist team in San Angelo. I went into the interview hoping to go to the people with all the answers and learned that they are seeking the same answers that most of us are. Although their methodology is different from most fishermen, you cannot discount their knowledge and sincerity in making fishing better for all of us. One thing that really impressed my was their collective passion for the fish and environment they live; the same environment that you and I enjoy every time we cast a line or twitch a bait. Without people like them on the front line, our fisheries would never improve and as the old saying goes, “What is true of Biology is true of life, if it is not growing and changing it is probably already dead.”
Thank you for taking the time to read this interview and if so inclines, take a listen to the podcast of the interview. On it is some things not included on the interview and worth a listen. Also, please feel free to comment. I’d love to know what you think of the interview and the observations of the biologist team.
Oh yeah, I hope to see you on the water!
You can reach Mukhtar Farooki at 651-5556 and at E-mail: mukhtar.farooqi@tpwd.state.tx.us
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