[Narration] In the cool running steams of the Texas Hill
Country, where the water is clear and virtually undisturbed, there is a threat looming over
one of the most important aquatic species that live here.
That species is the state fish of Texas, the Guadalupe Bass.
{music fades}
[Doc Harrison] Mike, are you doing any good?
[Mike Andrews] Good at tying flies.
[Narration] Doctor Guy Harrison and his friend Mike Andrews
are fly fishing the North Fork of the Guadalupe river.
They're looking for one of river's original species.
[Doc Harrison] I got him, fish on!
He's a Guadalupe bass.
He might be a hybrid, but he's Guadalupe.
He's a nice fish, it's about 14, 15 inches.
I didn't know I had him hardly until I felt him because he didn't make much of a splash.
He just kind of sucked it under.
Run some water through your gills here so you can go.
He put up a nice fight, put up a nice fight!
{sounds of line being cast}
[Mike Andrews] The Guadalupe Bass is a good sports fish.
It puts up a fine fight.
It's a pretty fish.
It doesn't get real big, probably around three pounds would be the largest.
But you get some nice sized ones and they're native to our state.
[Doc Harrison] The biggest problem is that most of the Guadalupe
Bass you catch are really hybrids.
As you know it's the state fish.
So we really ought to do something about that.
[Narration] A Texas native, the Guadalupe Bass has been
in danger of becoming extinct.
That's because the popular small-mouth bass, who also inhabit the same streams, have been
cross breeding with the native Guadalupe.
[Dr. Gary Garrett] Small mouth bass were brought into Texas by
Texas Parks & Wildlife in the mid 70s to provide an additional sport fish for anglers, having
no idea that they might hybridize with our native hill country Guadalupe bass.
[Narration] With support from the Upper Guadalupe River
Authority and local fishing clubs, it's here, at Heart of the Hills Fisheries Science Center
that Doctor Gary Garrett and Science Center Technicians are trying to save the Guadalupe
Bass.
[Dr. Gary Garrett] The problems with the hybridization of Guadalupe
bass were actually discovered back in the late 70s.
In the late 80s I got involved in it and we did a range-wide survey to determine the extent
of the problem and we found to our dismay that it was quite extensive.
We were fairly certain if we didn't do anything, we would lose the fish entirely, this species
would go extinct.
[Narration] Extinction was not an option to Doctor Garrett.
So, he helped devise a stocking program that would potentially bring back the Guadalupe.
[Dr. Gary Garrett] We began work to raise thousands and thousands
of pure Guadalupe bass, put them back into the system and simply overwhelm the hybrids.
{sounds of water running over falls}
[Kra Ahrens} Let's go get em Shane!
[Narration] Fisheries Technicians Shane Pavlicek and Kra
Ahrens are fishing for Guadalupe Bass at several spots along nearby Johnson Creek.
They are collecting data on the fish, a census of sorts, to find out who's who among the
bass community.
[Dr. Gary Garrett] Every fall we send the guys out to collect
Guadalupe Bass.
{line being cast out}
[Dr. Gary Garrett The point of that is twofold.
One is to just analyze the population to see how we're doing and what percentage of hybrids
are out there.
But then we also keep some of the purer large adults, and hold them as our brood fish.
[Shane Pavlicek] That's what were looking for that will make
a brooder right there.
Get him back to the hatchery, and hopefully get a bunch of fingerlings from that one.
{music}
[Narration] Catching the right fish can be a challenge.
[Kra Ahrens] Got me a little one!
Oh!
I have another Green Sunfish Another stinkin' Sunfish.
Another Green Sunfish, those things are getting on my nerves!
[Narration] But persistence usually pays off.
[Kra Ahrens] There we go, good ol Guadalupe Bass!
Right there at my thumb is brown tooth patch on its tongue and that's uh one of the ways
of identifying a Guadalupe bass.
[Dr. Gary Garrett] After the fish are caught they're brought
back to the research center.
There we note location they were caught in, how many from each location and each fish
is injected with an internal tag.
[Shane Pavlicek] 260
[Dr. Gary Garrett] So each of these fish are individually identified.
And we take fin clips off of the fish for analysis.
[Dr. Gary Garrett] In the very early days, we actually had to
look at the fish and measure things like numbers of scales and fin rays and pretty much make
our best guess as to whether it was pure or hybrid.
But today we use the latest technology and that's DNA analysis and we can tell not only
if it's pure or not.
We can tell if it was a back-crossed hybrid.
We can tell a lot about its genetic history.
The other nice thing about this technology is we don't have to kill the fish to find
out what's going on with them.
We can literally just cut a little bit of their fin.
The fish are just fine.
[Narration] Once the DNA testing is completed, the pure
Guadalupe bass are separated from the hybrids back at the Science Center.
They'll be held through the winter months until Spring.
That's when mating pairs will be matched and moved to the ponds for spawning.
{splashing water}
[Narration] It's a coordinated effort with Mother Nature,
designed to produce as many fish as possible.
[Bobby Wienecke] Large.
[Dr. Gary Garrett] One large.
[Bobby Wienecke] Large.
[Dr. Gary Garrett] Another large.
[Bobby Wienecke] One small.
[Dr. Gary Garrett] One small.
[Dr. Gary Garrett] The critical stage is actually getting the
fish out into the ponds and getting a successful spawn.
We've got to time it just right.
If we put the fish out too early and we get a late norther we can lose everything so it's
a real balancing and timing act to get it just right.
[Narration] Fisheries technician Bobby Wienecke grew up
near the Science Center.
He's been familiar with the state fish practically all his life.
[Bobby Wienecke] When I was a kid growing up, I used to fish
Johnson creek and we used to catch a certain little bass and we always called it a river
bass.
But then I found out that they had the real name of a Guadalupe bass.
[Narration] Part of Bobby's job is to manage the productivity
of the ponds.
But the Guadalupe thrive in fast water, and getting them to spawn in open ponds wasn't
easy.
That was until the creation,ů of the Guadalupe Bass Condo.
[Bobby Wienecke] It seems like they want to hang around rock
ledges, under rocks and that's where we pick up most our fish.
We more or less decided to come up with a condo that you set up in a pond that they
would fill more secure.
I think it's probably a 95% difference in just letting them go in a pond without any
cover.
[Narration] When the male has successfully attracted a
female to the bass condo, she could lay up to 9000 eggs, which will only take a few days
to hatch.
The male will remain at the nest to protect the young from would be predators.
After 3 months, the ponds are drained.
The brood fish are saved for future restocking efforts, but the fingerlings will be moved
to their new home in Johnson Creek.
[Dr. Gary Garrett] We don't want to stock them at too small of
a size because they'll just-basically we'll just be putting fish food out in the river.
We want them to be large enough to fend for themselves and have a fairly good chance of
survival.
{rippling creek}
[Dr. Gary Garrett:] Once we get to the creek, what we do is find
good locations, good habitat, good hiding places, and the kind of places that Guadalupe
Bass are designed to hide in.
They know, they recognize that this is where I belong and they'll move right into their
habitat.
{music}
[David Wilson] We're putting them in slowly so that they
can adjust to this new environment.
We're working with the State Fish of Texas here.
So that's kind of a one-of-a-kind deal.
[Dr. Gary Garrett] The plan for the program is to stock intensively
for 5 years.
What I want to do is put a quarter of a million fish into the Guadalupe river and its tributaries
every year and in doing that I feel pretty confident we're going to push that hybridization
percentage down to around zero.
If we do that, we probably can say we've saved the Guadalupe bass.
[Narration] The efforts by Heart of the Hills Fisheries
Science Center, are making an difference.
And if Dr. Garrett has a say in the matter, the Guadalupe Bass will long endure as the
official state fish of Texas.