HOT SPRINGS - To help provide Lake Ouachita with more largemouth bass, the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission fisheries division released 55,000 4-inch fingerlings into the lake July 18.

Stuart Wooldridge, AGFC fisheries biologist, said releasing the larger size fingerlings gives them a higher survival rate. “Those fish will be able to take on anything they want,” he said. “In the nursery pond the fingerlings grow to a bigger size since we are able to provide them with more food.”

The fingerlings were fed a diet of fathead minnows, young bream and young shad until they depleted them, Wooldridge said.

The fingerlings were then drained into the west end of Lake Ouachita from the pond located near Joplin.

The release of the “jumbo” fingerlings was part of a current stocking plan for the lake. Earlier this summer, Fisheries Division released 104,500 fingerling largemouth bass and 28,000 fingerling smallmouth bass into the east end of the lake. “We were able to hit both sides of the lake, adding to the natural spawn,” Wooldridge said. “But in 2004 we have had a good number of largemouth bass naturally spawned in the lake also.”

Wooldridge said the high waters on the lake this summer have provided good food for the bass and will produce a good year class for fishermen.

While the AGFC usually alternates fish crops in the pond between largemouth bass, walleye, and striped bass fingerlings, next year they will again stock the nursery pond with largemouth bass. “The pond will fill up with rainfall runoff over the winter and we will stock it with minnows and shad in the spring,” he said.