Southwest Catch of the Week: (Caballo Lake) Robert Resendez caught a few big blue catfish using cut bait on May 2.
Source: N.M. Department of Wildlife
Photos: Courtesy
Story By Melissa Garnett, Southeast Area Public Information Specialist
Southwest New Mexico Fishing Report
- Bear Canyon Lake: Fishing conditions have been adversely affected in the aftermath of the Trout Fire.
- Bill Evans Lake: Fishing for catfish was fair to good when using Orange PowerBait.
- Caballo Lake: Fishing for catfish was good when using cut bait.
- Elephant Butte Lake: The most recent report was received April 23. At that time, fishing for largemouth bass was good when using grubs. The South Monticello boat ramp is currently closed due to low water levels. The closure will be lifted when water levels rise and conditions allow.
- Escondida Lake: Fishing for catfish was good when using swim baits.
- Gila River: Streamflow near Gila Wednesday morning was 53.6 cfs.
- Gila Waters: Streamflow near Gila Hot Springs Wednesday morning was 62.9 cfs.
- Lake Roberts: Fishing for catfish was slow when using PowerBait.
- Quemado Lake: The most recent report was received April 23. At that time, fishing for tiger muskie was good when using Panther Martins.
- Rio Grande: Streamflow below Elephant Butte Dam on Wednesday morning was 518 cfs.
- Snow Lake: The most recent report was received April 16. At that time, fishing for trout was slow when using spinners and flies.
Department of Wildlife received no reports for the following waterbodies over the past three weeks: Glenwood Pond, Percha Dam, Rancho Grande Ponds, Trees Lake and Young Pond.
A big effort to make largemouths
By Melissa Garnett
Southeast Area Public Information Specialist
The New Mexico Department of Wildlife operates one warmwater hatchery: the Rock Lake State Fish Hatchery, nestled two miles south of Santa Rosa.
The hatchery specializes in growing largemouth bass for warmwater fisheries across the state. A big effort goes into growing largemouth. This is the time of year that bass are spawning. Caring for and conditioning broodstock requires hatchery biologists to ensure fish are disease-free and in good body condition. Fat healthy fish make babies.
Spawntex (coconut fiber) mats are placed in ponds for brooders to lay eggs on. The texture of the mats is perfect for eggs to stick. Males stake out a little nest and entice females to lay their eggs. After fertilization, males will stay with the nest and guard the eggs and newly hatched fry. The male fans the eggs with his fins to increase oxygen flow and protects them from predators.
Hatchery staff collect these mats and incubate them in the hatchery building to increase the hatch rate. The eggs hatch in 7-10 days, depending on temperature. Newly hatched fry live on nutrients in their yolk sack for a few days while they finish developing a gut that can handle prey. Once they are ready to start hunting, they go back outside into a pond to live on zooplankton. This stage is called grow-out, or Phase I. Phase I bass are ready for harvest when they reach a certain size or when the pond runs out of food.
Fish farming is a combination of science and a little bit of art. A hatchery worker understands the biology of the fish he or she is growing and the signs and cues from the environment that tell him or her when a pond “looks ready.” The ponds at Rock Lake are lined and have Kansas kettles — concrete U-shaped structures at the bottom of the pond. As the water drains, the fish are herded into the kettle where they can easily be crowded and processed. Every time the fish are moved, biologists get a count to measure survival and growth rates.
Some bass are stocked at this stage, while some go back inside the building for feed training. Feed training is no joke. It’s an intense week of feeding bass every 30 minutes around the clock for 24 hours. Its constantly cleaning tanks, checking for disease and mortality, prepping feeds and typically bringing in fish from other ponds concurrently with the ones you’re training.
Once largemouth bass have been trained to eat a pelleted diet, they can grow to large sizes, reaching 12+ inches in roughly two years. It also helps to grow all fish equally, so there the population is more uniform in size. Of course, largemouth will still chase and eat live prey if offered, but the cost of producing large numbers of forage for grow-out bass is significant. Wild forage brings wild disease and parasites into a squeaky-clean hatchery — no, thanks! Our staff has been working hard on growing these little beauties and we don’t want the risk.
Feed-trained bass can return to ponds for another phase of grow-out. Some are set aside to grow to catchable size (12-14 inches), and some are kept for future broodstock.
Next time you catch a big one, thank your hatchery team, and think about starting that New Mexico Bass Challenge — this could put you one fish closer to completion! New Mexico’s bass trophy lakes include Lake Roberts, Bill Evans Lake and Clayton Lake.
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