Wyoming Wildlife magazine - 11

NEWS

Crappie worth the trip
for Wyoming waters
CASPER - More than 2,500 miles, some
bad roads and a stop to help a neighboring
state. The result: more crappie for Wyoming
waters.
In late October 2020, Wyoming Game
and Fish Department Statewide Response
Specialists Kurtis Youse and Erik Waring
drove to Lonoke, Arkansas, in a fish distribution truck to pick up about 40,000 black
and 70,000 white crappie, along with 2,000
triploid grass carp.
Game and Fish receives warm/cool-water
fish from five states and, in exchange, provides
those states with fish and eggs from cold-water
species - usually trout. Since the 1990s,
Game and Fish has made such exchanges
with Arkansas. The department has these fish
trade agreements because it does not have
the capabilities to raise warm/cool-water fish
species in its hatchery system.
Travis Trimble, Game and Fish assistant
fish culture supervisor, said Arkansas received
50,000 tiger trout eggs from Wyoming in
2020. In addition to the eggs, every spring
Game and Fish transports trout to Arkansas
in exchange for channel catfish.
Game and Fish made a stop in Colorado,
another of its fish trade partners, to drop off
the 2,000 carp and 10 percent of the white
crappie on its way back from Arkansas. Those
fish were offloaded onto Colorado Parks and
Wildlife trucks in Limon, Colorado.
In Wyoming, black crappie were stocked
into Bump-Sullivan Reservoir and Rock Lake
in the Laramie region, and Wardell, Texaco,
and J Bar U reservoirs in the Casper region.
All the white crappie, about 30,000, were
placed in Glendo Reservoir.
" It was a huge undertaking to get this trip
planned and coordinated. There are a lot of
moving parts to these trips and a lot of people who helped out, " Trimble said. " Some of
Wyoming's reservoirs have really good crappie
populations and support crappie really well,
we just don't have the capability to produce
them in our hatchery system. This is a very
unique and popular fish to bring to the state
for our anglers. "
All of this was done over a five-day
period, despite Youse and Waring having to

Wyoming Game and Fish Department employees sort black crappie from Arkansas prior to putting them in Wyoming waters.
Arkansas is one of the states Game and Fish has fish trade agreements with. (WGFD photo)

deal with bad roads and wintry weather as
they left Wyoming. Fortunately, the weather
and roads cleared up as they went through
western Nebraska. Another fortunate aspect
is travel restrictions due to the COVID-19
pandemic hasn't totally eliminated Game and
Fish's ability to continue its fish trades with
its out-of-state partners.
One of the challenges for Youse and Waring was acclimating the fish for the conditions
they faced in their new Wyoming home.
" When we pick up the fish in Arkansas
they're in about 65-degree water, " Trimble
said. " When we get them back here, the

bodies of water are almost frozen. There is
a degree of difficulty to temper those fish
and get them cooled down on the way back
home. "
To help with this transition, hatchery water
from Wyoming was transported to Arkansas
which was about 60 degrees when the crappie were loaded into the truck. On the way
back to Wyoming, Youse and Waring further
reduced the water temperature by leaving tank
lids open at night while the truck was sitting
in the motel parking lots. Traveling that time
of year also reduced tank water temperatures.
- Robert Gagliardi, WGFD

Wyoming Wildlife | 11

Wyoming Wildlife magazine

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