CALLAWAY COUNTY – The Callaway County Tourism Commission is partnering with the Kentucky Department of Fish and Wildlife Resources to bring more fishing enthusiasts to Kentucky Lake.
Earlier this week, Callaway County Tourism Director Jeremy Whitmore and Tourism Commissioner Paul Lister, along with several KDFWR employees, went on a boat ride in Wildcat Creek to drop several plastic devices, known as fish attractants, into Blood River and Cypress Bay. Whitmore said the board decided to purchase the products to improve fish habitat and increase more sport fishing in the lake. Lister, who was a program coordinator and fisheries biologist with KDFWR until his retirement in 2018, offered to work with the agency on the project when the topic came up at the meeting.
“Fishing is a major tourist attraction, and whenever I go to an out-of-town (tourism industry) trade show, people always ask me, ‘How’s the fishing?'” Whitmore said. “Our board was discussing different ways to boost fishing, and Paul came up with the idea of a fish habitat attractant, which was a success. So we decided to invest $10,000 into this project and partner with the Fish and Wildlife Service to bring it to Kentucky Lake and show people we’re continually trying to improve the fishing experience on Kentucky Lake.”
According to the KDFWR website, like all animals, fish need suitable habitat to live, raise young and find food.
“Most of Kentucky’s lakes were created over 50 years ago and are beginning to show signs of aging,” the site states. “Natural processes such as sedimentation and the collapse of woody structures can reduce fish spawning and nursery areas. KDFWR is actively implementing projects throughout the state aimed at improving, enhancing, and replacing this habitat lost over time. A lack of habitat also presents an opportunity for anglers. The old adage “If you build it, the fish will come” also applies to fish habitat. Building habitat structures in areas frequented by anglers can attract fish from poor habitat areas, making fishing less hit-and-miss. Deciding where to fish on a lake can be a daunting task for novice anglers. This is another reason why KDFWR provides maps to help you build habitat that attracts fish and find areas with high fish activity.”
“We’ll be putting in 75 in total,” Lister said, “in five habitats, with 15 structures per site. The Fish and Wildlife Service has already put in some fish attractant buoys to let people know what’s down there and that there’s something there that will attract fish. The product is made by a company called Mossback, and we bought it with tourism dollars.”
Spencer Phillips, a fish habitat biologist with KDFWR, said the device attracts both small and large fish, but it attracts the most of the three main species of fish caught in Kentucky Lake: crappie, bluegill and bass.The device’s main structure is a PVC pipe with long pieces of plastic, or shade blinds, sticking outward like branches.
“The shade blinds are also designed so that the V-shape traps organic matter,” Phillips says. “Algae and moss will grow on top of the detritus as it builds up, which will attract more fish.”
While fish habitat can also be created by trees and other underwater objects, artificial fish-attracting devices have at least one advantage over those, Phillips said.
“We work with a lot of brush construction, and I’m not against brush construction; I really like it,” Phillips said. “[This includes]cedar and hardwood, but one of the benefits of this is that it doesn’t degrade in water. We have a very limited staff, so we can work very efficiently in terms of longevity. Again, I’m a big fan of brush as well, but there are times when brush construction makes sense in terms of using resources wisely. Ideally, I think a combination of both is the best way to go.”
Lister said the fish attractants are an effective way to attract periphyton – a collection of organisms including algae, fungi, microbes and bacteria. As they grow, they attract insects, which attract smaller fish, which in turn attract larger fish, he said.
“We know how important habitat is,” Lister said. “Kentucky Lake is over 50 years old, it’s an aging reservoir, so all the natural brush that the fish need has rotted away, the buttonball bushes have died. When I was at the Fish and Wildlife Service, we did a habitat project, and like Spencer said, the woody stuff, like the tree tops, always seems best to me, but again, you have to replace them every few years, but this stuff attracts a lot of periphyton over time and it gets better just the same.”
Lister said he learned a lot through trial and error during his time with KDFWR about what methods work best to create good fishing areas. He said in the early 2000s, the agency heard a lot of complaints about declining crappie populations, but the measures taken at the time didn’t produce any fruitful results.
“During the meeting, (some attendees) complained about the crappie and wanted to close parts of the Blood River to fishing, which was ridiculous,” Lister said. “We can’t close the river because there are a lot of houses (on the banks), so I jokingly said, ‘If you’re going to do anything, you might as well stock the crappie.’ I was being sarcastic because there’s not much benefit to stocking a reservoir this size (even though I think it would be better to stock more fish). The Fish and Wildlife Service started a five-year crappie stocking program and stocked the Blood River and Jonathan Creek for five years. Hundreds of thousands of crappie were stocked, but less than 1% ended up in fishermen’s cages. We tagged the fish (to track them).
“It was a lot of money, but it was unsuccessful. What we actually saw was that the overall population declined further in Blood River, while the test bay in Jonathan Creek, where we didn’t stock, saw an increase in the number of bad populations over a five-year period. So the stockings made the problem in Blood River worse.”
The tourism commission is funded by a one-time 3 percent tax on lodging facilities such as hotels, resorts and short-term rentals. Whitmore and Lister said investing in new fish habitat is a wise use of funds and will hopefully increase the productivity of fishing in these areas, drawing more tourists.
