Bart Castleberry, mayor of Conway, said that folks are worried about what will become of Lake Conway’s alligator when the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission starts draining the lake in September.
At least one alligator inhabits the 6,700-acre fishing lake between Conway and Mayflower. Some believe somebody released the gator into the lake after it outgrew the aquarium in which it was raised.
Castleberry said that the alligator plans to go on an extended vacation while his home is being remodeled.
“It’s time we addressed the alligator in the room,” Castleberry said recently during an announcement ceremony for the lake’s renovation. “As soon as word trickled out, people said, ‘What are you gonna do about the alligator?’
“Well,” Castleberry continued, “I came out early one morning and paddled out in my boat with a cup of coffee, and the the alligator and I had a cup and we visited for awhile. And he told me that he’s been wanting to visit some of his relatives for a long time, ever since he left the aquarium. His plan is to hit Palarm Creek, hit the Arkansas River down to Mississippi down to Louisiana to visit with his folks. So I think we’ve got it covered.”
At least alligators are native to Arkansas. Remember the octopus that was caught at Lake Conway?
It happened 20 years ago, on Dec. 4, 2003. John Mazurek of Glen Ellyn, Ill., caught a large octopus at Lake Conway’s dam. It was alive at the time. Arkansas Game and Fish Commission officials said at the time that the octopus was probably released from an aquarium as well.
Fish files
Speaking of lake oddities, do you remember when the Game and Fish Commission stocked late trout in Greers Ferry and Bull Shoals lakes?
The Game and Fish commission stocked lake trout in 1986 in hopes of creating new trophy fisheries. Unlike the rainbow and cutthroat trout, which are in the Oncorhynchus genus, the lake trout is a freshwater char in the Salvelinus genus. The brown trout is in the Salmo genus.
The Game and Fish Commission believed that lake trout would prosper in the cold, deep reservoirs. A few anglers learned how to catch the lakers and built a short-lived guide business around them. If any of those lake trout are still alive, they would be huge.
Also, the Game and Fish Commission stocked tiger muskies on the Spring River in the 1980s. A tiger muskie is a cross between the muskellunge and northern pike. They grow very large, and they are fierce fighters. They also love to eat trout, and that was a big problem. The Spring River didn’t attract many muskie anglers, but it is a very popular trout fishery.
Muskies didn’t just cause conflicts among anglers, but also among fisheries biologists. Word got out in the early 1990s about an incident that occurred during an electrofishing outing one night on the Spring River. The trout biologist at the time shocked up a big tiger muskie and killed it with a blow to the head with a boat paddle. His assistant, who was from a Great Lakes state where muskies are sacred, objected strongly. A fistfight ensued. The subordinate biologist was reassigned to a different part of the state.
A Game and Fish employee told me about the incident. Game and Fish officials at the time said the fistfight had nothing to do with the biologist’s reassignment.
The state record for tiger muskie is 23 pounds, 12 ounces. Randy Wyatt of Thayer, Mo., caught it on June 27, 1995.
I also had an encounter with what I’m certain was a tiger muskie on the Spring River in 1995. I was fishing a pool below a horseshoe fall not far downstream from Mammoth Spring State Park. I was using an ultralight spinning rig with a Bomber Ultralight A crankbait in lemon lime color. A fish hit that lure so hard that it separated it from the lip.
Jack Harper, the former Southeast regional fisheries supervisor for the Oklahoma Department of Wildlife Conservation, told me in 1999 that steelhead inhabit Broken Bow Lake. He said the ODWC stocked steelhead following a failed attempt to establish kokanee salmon in the McCurtain County reservoir.
The steelhead actually took, Harper said. They make an annual spawning run in the Mountain Fork River. The ODWC kept quiet about its steelhead fishery. The few anglers that catch a steelhead don’t know what it is, Harper said.
Game and fish agencies aren’t nearly as much fun anymore since they stopped their oddball stocking projects.
