Returning to Lake Apopka's glory days
At one time, Lake Apopka was the Bass capitol of the World before contaminates began to pollute the Lake. Florida is hoping to release a hungry sunshine bass that will help restore the Lake to it's heyday.
Before the Apopka Lake can return to it's glory days, it needs a challenging clean-up from decades of abuse. Recently, Florida's Fish and Wildlife commission stocked the lake with 400,000 sunshine bass costing about $20,000. This variety of fish is crossed between a male stripped bass and a female white bass.
Hatched at Blackwater Research Center in Pensacola, new breed of bass were then raised in state's aqua lab in Sumpter County and then later trucked to Apopka Lake. Now fat & happy, these bass are ready to hunt and exterminate the gizzard shad.
Days gone by, the lake was a popular attraction in the 1930's to personalities including movie stars, tourists, gamblers, and mobsters. Today, the Lake is a 31,000 acre cesspool of algae filled with phosphates and pesticides caused by the runoff of farms.
Phosphates though necessary, deplete the lake of oxygen ultimately killing the large-mouth bass and other sports fish. Gizzard fish are the scavengers that adopted to the foreign chemicals by eating the algae & dirt and then excreting phosphorous bank into the cycle.
Various attempts to eliminate shad fish have been largely unsuccessful including capturing them in gill nets to be later harvested. But all the efforts have been inadequate prompting the deployment of the sunshine bass to the arena.
The Fish & Wild Life conservation dept. is hoping that within 3-4 years the bass will eat all the shad reversing the phosphate problem, although this is all theoretical. Now just 10 inches long, there is hope that they will reach 6 pounds measuring 16 inches by next year.
When the local anglers catch the new bass, the phosphates come with the fish thereby changing the chemistry of the Lake. To date. no good thing has come out of Lake Apopka.
Before the Apopka Lake can return to it's glory days, it needs a challenging clean-up from decades of abuse. Recently, Florida's Fish and Wildlife commission stocked the lake with 400,000 sunshine bass costing about $20,000. This variety of fish is crossed between a male stripped bass and a female white bass.
Hatched at Blackwater Research Center in Pensacola, new breed of bass were then raised in state's aqua lab in Sumpter County and then later trucked to Apopka Lake. Now fat & happy, these bass are ready to hunt and exterminate the gizzard shad.
Days gone by, the lake was a popular attraction in the 1930's to personalities including movie stars, tourists, gamblers, and mobsters. Today, the Lake is a 31,000 acre cesspool of algae filled with phosphates and pesticides caused by the runoff of farms.
Phosphates though necessary, deplete the lake of oxygen ultimately killing the large-mouth bass and other sports fish. Gizzard fish are the scavengers that adopted to the foreign chemicals by eating the algae & dirt and then excreting phosphorous bank into the cycle.
Various attempts to eliminate shad fish have been largely unsuccessful including capturing them in gill nets to be later harvested. But all the efforts have been inadequate prompting the deployment of the sunshine bass to the arena.
The Fish & Wild Life conservation dept. is hoping that within 3-4 years the bass will eat all the shad reversing the phosphate problem, although this is all theoretical. Now just 10 inches long, there is hope that they will reach 6 pounds measuring 16 inches by next year.
When the local anglers catch the new bass, the phosphates come with the fish thereby changing the chemistry of the Lake. To date. no good thing has come out of Lake Apopka.
posted by michael at
9:19 AM
