to meet Mukhtar and Darin, I’m disappointed to find out that just five nets is enough to sample the lake’s catfish. Surprisingly, the first three nets don’t turn up any buffs at all. There are a couple of small carp, some impressive drum and, again, lots and lots of gar. We also catch and release some smallish triploid grass carp that are stocked into Lake Austin to control the hydrilla. The waves are starting to get a bit rough and the wind is picking up as we race down the lake for the last two nets. I’m glad of the life jacket’s extra padding around my ribs as we’re thrown around. We can tell the last two nets are heavy because the floats are in danger of being pulled under. We’ve hit the buffalo jackpot. Probably the biggest we have to untangle are around 40lb. Again, not big by the usual lake standards but there are others much bigger that power away before they can be hauled into the boat to be weighed. Thankfully the ride back to the boat ramp is short because by now the water is getting too rough to continue. This was Mukhtar’s 3rd gill net survey of the year. He’s scheduled to do electrofishing surveys of two community fishing lakes in April,
with a further three or four electrofishing surveys of major reservoirs in the fall. During 2013, the San Marcos district office will complete electrofishing surveys of five major reservoirs and four community fishing lakes. They’ll also do six gill net surveys, one trap net survey, and nine aquatic vegetation surveys. There are 14 other TPWD district fisheries management offices in the state and they all have similar workloads to the San Marcos office. Surveys are conducted every year. Most major lakes are on a four year rotation for report writing purposes, although data collection may occur many times for a particular lake during that period. Electrofishing surveys of major lakes are done in the fall, at night, and trap net surveys are also conducted in the fall. Gill net surveys are done in spring and aquatic vegetation and habitat surveys are done in the summer. It’s a challenge for TPWD to make resources stretch to enable them to monitor fish stocks, water quality and environmental conditions, and the recent lack of rain hasn’t made it any easier. “One of the most serious environmental problems we face is