AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF

Small Type

He’s our official Texas state fish, a dapper little fellow about 12 inches in length and a pound in weight. He has green spots and lateral lines that make him look as though he’s wearing a pinstripe suit, and he lives only in the rivers of the Edwards Plateau.

He is the Guadalupe bass, a small and relatively powerful fish that deserves better treatment from the Texans who claim him as a state symbol.

The Guadalupe like shallow, fast moving water. We’ve dammed the rivers, creating deeper, slower moving waterways dominated by largemouth bass.

We’ve also introduced non-native bass — specifically, smallmouth bass — into these Hill Country rivers, and that’s led to cross-breeding and a significant dilution of Guadalupe genes.

Now the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department is going to try to protect and revive the remaining populations of pure Guadalupe bass. With financial assistance from the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, TPWD will work to restore lost habitat, improve existing habitat and restock entire streams with purebred fish.

"We intend to work on all of the streams that drain the Edwards Plateau," says Gary Garrett, Watershed Policy Director for Texas Parks and Wildlife. "We want to repair the damage we’ve already done. Obviously, we can’t tear down any dams, though reservoirs are a big part of the problem. These are riverine bass, and we can’t restore them throughout their range so we’ll do it in places where it makes sense, with landowners who are willing to take part."

Garrett says the first stage of the Guadalupe bass initiative likely will focus on portions of the South Llano River. He’s met with landowner alliances that are willing to take part and would like to see the Guadalupe bass population, which is in relatively good shape there now, restored and enhanced.

"We’ve put together a business plan for studying all native bass in their home ranges," says Tim Birdsong, who is federal aid coordinator for TPWD and has worked with officials in other states with bass issues.

"The plan is to study shoal bass (in Florida), redeye bass (South Carolina) and Guadalupe bass," Birdsong says. "It’s probable that we’ll get $300,000 to $400,000 to start (the three-state effort) and the Guadalupe bass will be the pilot project."

Stocking obviously will be an important element of the effort, Garrett says, but before stocking any river, TPWD needs to determine if the habitat in the river can sustain the new population.

Then there’s the matter of the fish. Not all Guadalupe bass are the same.

"Probably each river basin has a slightly different (Guadalupe bass)," Garrett says. "It’s not a different species but a different population that’s adapted to that specific environment. We’ll treat each one as a different population and stock only with brood fish from that basin. We should be especially cautious with this because we want to undo all the bad and keep the good."

Working near the headwaters of the Guadalupe River, biologists from Heart of the Hills Research Station in Ingram have been able to use Guadalupe bass stocking to reduce a non-native gene pool from 30 percent to virtually none, says Garrett. "That’s taken 10 years, but I suspect that five years is a reasonable expectation in most streams."

Once the genetic work has been done to match hatchery brood stock with current river populations, fisheries staff will overload the system with Guadalupe bass fry. That will help increase the Guadalupe genes, plus keep non-native fry from growing to adulthood, furthering the Guadalupe cause.

"Fewer hybrids will survive and the Guadalupe will get stronger," Garrett says.

In effect, the state is working to undo a situation it helped create by stocking Hill Country rivers with smallmouth bass, which joined with the Guadalupe to create the hybrid fish.

Larger, aggressive and often quite large, the hybrids were popular with anglers, but they overwhelmed the native Guadalupe populations. Biologists have been trying for at least 20 years to regain control of the river systems and to reduce the hybrid populations, Garrett says.