Hundreds of fishermen showed up when the Percy Quin State Park lake reopened this month after a four-year shutdown. But state fisheries officials made sure there were plenty of fish to welcome them.
Trevor Knight, a resource conservation biologist with the Mississippi Department of Wildlife, Parks and Fisheries, said 175 children showed up on a “youth day” to fish the lake two Saturdays ago.
“The amount of catfish they were catching was ridiculous,” Knight told the McComb Rotary Club on Wednesday.
The following Wednesday, Sept. 21, was even busier.
Knight said wildlife officials counted 215 boats on the lake and another 200 people fishing from the shoreline.
“In the first nine hours the lake was open, basically we had an angler for every acre of the lake,” Knight said.
The wildlife department drained the 490-acre lake after damage from Hurricane Isaac in 2012 put the dam at risk of failing.
The state finished the spillway and levee work in 2014 and then set about restocking the lake. It put in six different species: bluegill, sunfish, crappie, largemouth bass, grass carp and a hybrid blue/channel catfish. The restocking took place during Knight’s first month with the agency.
However, a 2015 sampling of fish in the lake revealed at least 24 different kinds, and Knight said there may be two or three others as well.
“It’s a very diverse fishery,” he remarked. “It’s probably one of the best in any of our state lakes.”
He said one reason for this is the Tangipahoa River’s large watershed. Also, the grass and other vegetation that grew into the lake during the two years it was drained provided plenty of cover for the fish to thrive.
This past January, the wildlife department sank clusters of beech and oak trees into the lake to create “fish attractors.” Knight said the GPS locations of these sites are on the department’s web site.
The most challenging task before the lake reopened this month was to remove the vegetation. The department tried spraying it and burning it without success.
Knight said the department wound up putting “a Mad Max kind of boat out there” to uproot the vegetation and push it to shore, where heavy equipment collected it.
“We basically got out about 120 acres of vegetation during that 31⁄2 months of work,” he said. “Then we sprayed anything else that was out there.”
That work continued right up to the reopening of the lake.
Surveys of fishermen at the lake show that most of the bass catches are between 11 and 15 inches long, while most of the crappie are 9 to 11 inches.
Knight added that alligators have come back into the lake.
“When we were removing the vegetation, it wasn’t uncommon to see six or seven alligators,” he said. “There’s one at least 11 feet long, and a bunch of smaller ones.
“As long as people are not feeding them, they usually are not causing a problem. They kind of don’t want to be around us.”
