- It's a very large reservoir.
It's 185,000 surface-acres.
[country music]
- NARRATOR: On the Texas-Louisiana border,
Toledo Bend, by area,
is the largest man-made lake in the South.
- Toledo Bend has a storied history as a bass fishery
going back to the mid-60s when the lake was impounded.
- NARRATOR: Today, fisheries biologists comb these
vast waters to keep a close eye
on a couple of dozen largemouth bass.
- Toledo Bend itself raised its own bar back in 2015 and 16.
It was the bar for every other bass fishery.
So it only had one way to go and that was down.
- NARRATOR: Keeping the bass fishing bar high
is what this work is all about.
- We've started a largemouth bass telemetry study.
What initiated this study was what
turned out to be pretty tough fishing here
the last year or two at Toledo Bend for bass.
- NARRATOR: Todd Driscoll and his crew
are trying to increase our understanding of bass behavior
to improve fishing success for anglers who flock here.
- The Bassmaster magazine had Toledo Bend ranked
number one in the world in terms of
a bass fishery in year 2015 and 16.
- Boom!
[laughs]
There's an eight-pounder.
- ANNOUNCER: 185,000 acres.
We've been looking forward to this one all year long.
- TODD: Toledo Bend has always been a popular bass fishing lake
but you can imagine how that fishing pressure increased
with the number one world ranking two years in a row.
- NARRATOR: While fish numbers dropped,
reported catches dropped further
raising some questions.
- TODD: With all this fishing pressure,
we, as well as the anglers began to wonder
are some of these fish literally
avoiding boats.
As you increase fishing pressure,
they get caught a time or two.
Fishing can certainly get tougher
and studies have flat proven that bass learn.
Are they literally swimming three or four miles
out in the main lake basin to avoid anglers.
Those are the things we're gonna address with this study.
[upbeat music]
Exactly half our fish we've caught out of deep water,
15 to 30 feet,
and the other half we collected essentially
from five feet to the bank.
Now the shallow fish are easy to collect.
[motor revs]
Our electrofishing boat,
that's what we use to index bass populations,
works very well.
We've got 12 of those fish tagged.
But those deep fish are a challenge.
Traditional fishery gears, we have no way of sampling fish,
bass in particular, out 15 to 30 feet.
So, that actually gives us fisheries biologist
a chance to fish.
- NARRATOR: So a couple of years of fish study work begin
with a couple of days that don't feel like work at all.
- TODD: I know my whole staff's enjoyed this project.
You know, particularly the fishing aspect of things.
- Man this is, I tell you...
I don't know whether he needs to pay me
or I need to pay to stay the state for coming out here.
- People give us grief, fisheries biologists,
"Heck, all you do is fish."
Well--
I was afraid of that.
Very, very rarely might we get a chance to do that.
But this study is actually one of those
where it's about the only effective way
to catch those deep fish.
This is all live data,
probably a little bass right there.
One of the drivers of this project
has been the advance in sonar electronics.
I drop it to the bottom,
you can see my weight.
You can see the worm above the weight.
You really don't stop and fish
until you see the fish.
That's how good these electronics are.
Could be because all this idling out here
with these high-end electronics is so common.
What might that do to their behavior?
We've got 12 fish we've collected with a rod and reel
in 15 to 35 feet or so.
I've been blessed to have a volunteer help us with that.
A retired friend of mine, George Herr.
The three or four days that we have fished for these fish,
he's really helped us with that.
He's come over here and scattered around a little bit.
You know, we'll keep them in a big live well
and gather four to eight fish to do surgeries in batches.
- NARRATOR: With fish on board,
a boat slip becomes an operating room,
where each fish is implanted with a radio transmitter.
- TODD: One four nine, two zero five.
[beeping]
Loud and clear.
I mean, we know these surgeries and methodology
is very sound.
But boy, you know, you're dealing with scalpel,
cutting around organs.
You know, the first few fish, it was...
it was pretty unnerving.
Make an incision,
a half to three quarters of an inch long.
The transmitter's inserted into the lower body cavity
below all the organs.
We also have to route that 18-inch-long antenna
out through the side of the fish.
Once you get a few surgeries under your belt...
hold still, hold still...
it's just pretty routine at that point.
[dramatic music]
In addition to the implanted radio tag,
they also have an external pink Floy tag
coming off the top of their back.
That Floy tag has identification number
plus my personal cell phone number.
And then it gets an intense salt dip for 30 seconds
which just kind of reinvigorates the fish.
It stimulates the slime coat
that a fish uses to protect itself against infection...
just an added mechanism to increase the survivability
of that fish once we release it.
Fish certainly have known home ranges,
so we release these fish back to where
we originally captured them.
[dramatic music]
There you go, back where we caught you.
[boat motor revs]
We come track these fish every two weeks
with telemetry equipment.
And we just got a hit on it right there.
We can detect the fish within about a half-mile distance.
Fine tune it with the handheld antenna.
We initiated this study
to answer those obvious questions
like habitat use, movement,
what the size of their home range is,
but then how outboard motor noise,
trolling motor noise,
just the presence of a boat might affect its behavior.
- Over there.
- TODD: Once we are that close, that directionality is so strong
that he instantly knows if that fish moves 10 or 15 feet.
Still ahead of you.?
And if we find out that maybe a majority of the time,
that outboard engine noise spook those fish,
well that's pretty good information for anglers to know.
- It's moving around.
- TODD: Yeah, no doubt.
This fish is just on the move here.
After today we've got 24 total fish
with transmitters in them.
It's been a great success so far.
We plan on the study continuing for another year to two,
depending on transmitter life.
So we please ask that any angler that catches
one of these fish give me a call on my cell phone
so we can know when and where you caught it,
and what you're gonna do with that fish.
What we certainly hope most of these fish
since they're study fish,
they're released.
We have a sister lake if you will involved in this study
and that's Lake Fork.
Both really popular bass lakes.
- There we go.
- TODD: Having Lake Fork involved just increases
sample size and is gonna help us
better answer those questions.
- NARRATOR: While the questions are about
fish behavior,
the reasons for asking
may be more about local economies.
- TODD: Bass fishing here in Deep East Texas,
I mean, it's king there's no doubt.
And in situations like this where
we see a decline in fishing quality,
you know, our end product is angler catch.
- Pretty fish.
- We can have a great population of bass out there
but it's all about the angling experience
and the catch factor.
This has just been a really fun project.
And I think it's gonna be real informative
for the anglers to.
We hope to learn some unique things about bass behavior
that no one has ever examined before.
And when the study is complete,
hopefully we can increase angler's efficiency
and in the end, increase their catch.
[dramatic music]