The Arkansas Game and Fish Commission recently approved a 120-day emergency order that cuts back the daily trout possession limit in areas surrounding the state’s four most significant cold-water fisheries.
Ozarks at Large’s Sophia Nourani spoke with Trey Reid, the assistant chief of communications at the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission, about the causes behind the shortfalls in the production of trout and what anglers can expect in these coming months.
Reid: Yeah, this was an emergency order that the commission enacted in order to provide some additional protections for our trout and our tailwater trout fisheries. Essentially, it has us put in place a catch-and-release regulation on the Bull Shoals Tailwater — the main stem of the White River from Bull Shoals Dam down to the confluence with the Norfork River, which is about 45 miles — and also catch-and-release-only trout fishing on the Norfork Tailwater, which is only about five miles from the Norfork Dam down to the confluence with the White.
Now, below the confluence on the Bull Shoals Tailwater, there is a daily limit of two fish, with some additional restrictions on lengths that were already in place. And on the Beaver and Greers Ferry Tailwaters — aka the Little Red River on the Ferry Tailwater — a daily limit of two fish, with a maximum length of 14 inches on those two streams.
Nourani: Okay, so why this specific area? Can you tell me about the Norfork National Fish Hatchery, please?
Reid: Yeah. So all of this, this emergency order, is necessary because of a catastrophic fish die-off at the Norfork National Fish Hatchery in conjunction with flood damage at our state-owned Jim Hinkle Spring River State Fish Hatchery over on Spring River at Mammoth Spring in Northeastern Arkansas.
So that flood back in April at our state-owned hatchery — that’s owned and operated by Arkansas Game and Fish — has caused about a 50% reduction in the number of fish that we have at the hatchery. And we lost a lot because of the flood. We thought- but the federal hatcheries — the Norfork and Greers Ferry hatcheries in the state, and the Mammoth Spring Federal Hatchery, which is very close to that hatchery — could probably make up for that, kind of make some adjustments to our stocking schedule and stay pretty close to what our stocking plans were based on our trout management plan.
However, over the past several weeks, the federal hatchery has lost well over a million fish. We estimate now that they’ve probably got about 10% of the trout they would typically have this time of year on that hatchery. The Norfork National Fish Hatchery is, in fact, the largest hatchery owned by the United States Fish and Wildlife Service. It’s not only big for Arkansas — it is the biggest hatchery in the Fish and Wildlife Service system.
And so we, as Arkansas Game and Fish, rely not just on the fish we produce at our state-owned hatchery, but those federal hatcheries to stock fish in the waters as well as to provide fish for us to work with at our hatcheries and our net pen facility down at Lake Ouachita.
So with them having a 90% loss — millions of fish at this point, just almost overnight, really over the last few weeks — all this has happened as a result of water quality issues. It is likely going to mean about a 70 to 80% reduction in the number of trout we stock in Arkansas’s trout waters. And it doesn’t look like the Norfork Hatchery — their best-case scenario — will not be able to provide fish to stock in Arkansas waters until June 2026 at the earliest.
So, facing that, yeah, we’re looking at the barrel of a loaded gun when it comes to trout stocking. There is going to be a significant reduction in the number of trout that Arkansas Game and Fish, in conjunction with the federal hatcheries, can stock in the state over the next several months.
And so this emergency order — I mean, it’s not something we necessarily wanted to do — but at the rate of about 65% of trout angling, according to our creel surveys, is already catch and release in Arkansas. But those 35% that keep fish, they, you know, we put the fish in and anglers take them out. The danger you run into is that if we continue to allow harvest at five fish per day across most of the rivers — we already have some catch-and-release zones set up, like a mile or two stretch of river — but if we continue to allow harvest to continue at the rate that it is, in short order, there would not be very many of those stocked rainbow trout left in these tailwater systems.
And essentially, the metric, the algorithm here, is do we want to impose some stricter regulations that will still allow people to catch some fish, not just keep them? Or, if you do nothing, pretty soon even the catch-and-release anglers — anybody that goes out — is not going to have a good fishing experience because there aren’t going to be many fish to catch.
So that’s kind of how we arrived at this.
Nourani: Maybe going back just a little bit further, can you explain what a hatchery is? And it sounds like Arkansas has a pretty significant hold on the national level when it comes to hatcheries. Can you tell me a little bit about that as well?
Reid: Yeah. Let’s go back to the mid-20th century, and that’s when the great American dam-building epoch was in full swing. That’s when we got things like the Tennessee Valley Authority down on the Tennessee River. That’s when we got the White River system of dams through the ’40s and ’50s and into the ’60s, as Beaver Lake was one of the last ones to come online.
So, anyway, we lost a lot of our warm-water fisheries — our smallmouth bass and other species, for instance. And to mitigate that loss, the federal government, which was in charge of these dam-building projects, established these hatcheries as mitigation hatcheries to help produce and stock fish into these new cold-water fisheries that took the place of our warm-water fisheries.
And so, yeah, we are pretty fortunate in Arkansas. Our Arkansas Game and Fish hatchery is really a neat story. The one on Spring River — that’s one we bought from the Kroger grocery company back in the 1980s. They were producing trout there and wanted to get rid of it. So we got it for a fire-sale price. And we have produced trout there for a number of years.
But we can’t produce all of the trout that our anglers catch or want. To keep these fisheries healthy and robust, we can’t do it all at that hatchery. So these federal hatcheries at Greers Ferry and Norfork at Mammoth Spring, those are very critical to our production. The Norfork Hatchery produces about half, or maybe a little more, of the fish stocked in Arkansas waters — trout, I mean.
Nourani: That’s very interesting. Thank you for that background. So how is this actually going to be implemented? Is there going to be some sort of oversight to make sure that this doesn’t happen, or what’s the process for that look like?
Reid: Yeah, I mean, obviously this is brand new. We just began to understand the severity and significance of the issues at the Norfork Hatchery in the last week or two, and it’s progressively gotten worse. We were aware they have water quality issues there. I mean, this is a time of year when there are water quality issues really across the board. But kind of a perfect storm of factors with water quality, water temperature, the fish that are dying in those raceways at the Norfork Hatchery are exacerbating those issues as they decompose.
And so, again, though, it’s brand new. The emergency order became effective immediately after our commission unanimously approved it this morning about 9 a.m. Our game wardens — our enforcement division — are meeting today, and I want to be clear: we’re not looking to catch anybody, like, hey, you didn’t know, we’re going to write you a ticket anyway.
Our enforcement division is going to really embark on more of an educational than an enforcement campaign vis-à-vis these new temporary — and I should emphasize temporary — regulations. This is for 120 days. That’s how these emergency orders work.
But, you know, we’re literally right now in the process of making signs to post at access points — boat ramps and walk-in access points on these rivers. I am working with the media, many of my colleagues are working with the media, to get the word out. We have a robust following on social media — I think we’ve got about a quarter million followers on Facebook these days — so we’re getting the information out there. We have text alert systems for people who have signed up to receive messages from us. We can get information out that way. So we’re covering all the bases — traditional and nontraditional media — to get the word out about this.
Our enforcement staff, again, are going to go on more of a public informational campaign to let anglers know what the new rules are and that sort of thing.
Nourani: That’s good. I’m glad that you guys are taking it from an educational standpoint as well. That’s very cool.
So you’ve talked about it — for lack of better words, it sounds like you guys are in pretty deep water when it comes to this trout stuff. Do you see yourselves having to extend that? I know that’s been part of the conversation, but with how tough things are looking right now, what do you see happening after the end of these 120 days?
Reid: Yeah, I mean, it’s hard to predict the future, and I’m not going to go too far out on a limb. But yeah, there certainly is a possibility that we could enact another emergency order to extend this for another up to 120 days. I doubt very seriously at this point that you would see it go beyond that.
We don’t want to do that to the fishing public, like, oh, you know, keep moving the goalpost type of thing. And again, I’d reiterate, we’re only doing this out of an abundance of caution and in the spirit of necessity and conservation. It’s our mission, really, at work.
But a lot of it depends on what happens with the Norfork Hatchery — how quickly they can recover from this catastrophic and ongoing event. One thing that’s in our favor is that those water quality issues the hatchery is facing right now will naturally improve with colder temperatures. Stratification of the water in Norfork Lake, a lot of it has to do with their intakes that come into the hatchery — where they come from, what depth of the lake.
But naturally, as water temperatures decrease, we’re going to have higher water quality once we get into November or December or January. The other kind of positive or silver lining is that trout fishing activity will not be as great over the next four to five months as it will be, say, come March, April, May, June, July.
So theoretically, at least, there will be fewer people fishing under this regulation, even though they can still take a couple of fish on certain parts of the river. There probably will be fewer people keeping fish and fewer people angling — increased water quality. So I’m optimistic and hopeful, I guess I should say, that we will not have to extend it.
There’s also the option of doing another emergency order but perhaps reducing the amount of mileage that’s under this catch-and-release regulation — instead of 45 miles of the White, maybe 20 miles, like the dam down to Cotter or something like that. Again, this is just hypothetical and speculative at this point because none of us can predict the future.
But yes, we’re hopeful that the federal hatchery at Norfork will get things squared away, water quality will improve, and they’ll start to get some fish coming online. But I can tell you this: they have told us that it’s unlikely they will produce a fish that can be stocked in our tailwaters until June 2026.
That was Trey Reed, assistant chief of communications at the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission, speaking with Ozarks at Large’s Sophia Nourani. This is Ozarks at Large.
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