After the storms, fisheries biologists’ sampling could find no fish in the Tickfaw River or surrounding areas apart from a few mullet. Numbers of fish surviving in the rivers being so low, the 2006 spawn almost didn’t happen.

According to Mark Lawson, an LDWF fisheries biologist in Baton Rouge, electrofishing sampling in 2006 turned up very little. “All the rivers from Baton Rouge to Slidell took an almost total hit south of Interstate 12,” he said. “We couldn’t get very far up the Tickfaw after the storm because of the downed trees, but we found a few fish in the Amite River above Bayou Manchac.

“We saw some survival up the rivers, but the bass and bluegill fishery was almost completely wiped out. We saw evidence that some bass made it out into Lake Maurepas and survived. Lake Maurepas had a lot of bass fingerlings in the spring of 2007.”

Fortunately, nature can recover after such a disaster, although it might take several years. With few predators to eat them, both the remaining fish and those stocked since the hurricanes should enjoy high survival and growth rates. In addition, fishing pressure on the rivers has decreased dramatically since the storms, giving more bass an opportunity to spawn and grow. Hugely reduced competition should enable the fish hatched in 2007 to achieve quick repopulation in uninhabited areas possessing high-quality bass habitat and suitable water conditions.

Humans have also stepped in to give Mother Nature a boost. State biologists released many bluegills, catfish and Florida-strain bass into the affected areas. Operation Jump Start, a three-year process of restocking the rivers until they can sustain themselves, should -- barring another devastating storm! -- bring fish populations back to pre-Katrina levels. In addition, some biologists collected adult bass from tournaments in other parts of the state and released them in the affected rivers.

“Nature will do a pretty good job of restocking the waters,” said Howard Rogillio, an LDWF biologist in Lacombe. “We’ve had movement of fish downstream in rivers. The surviving pockets of fish moved out into available habitat, but we’ll try to aid in the recovery by supplementary restocking.

“It’s a good chance to put more Florida bass in some waters. We’ve been stocking Floridas for years, but they have had a lot of competition. When we put fish into an area that already has a lot of fish, the survival rate after one year is not that good. In the last few years, we started stocking bass in the 6- to 8-inch range. Their survival rate is much better, but we don’t stock as many of them.”

The same thing happened to the Atchafalaya Basin after Hurricane Andrew destroyed that fishery in 1992 (Somewhat ironically, it was from the waters of the now-stressed Lake Pontchartrain Basin that biologists collected bass for release in that case.) The state then imposed a 14-inch minimum-size limit in many areas, the object being to allow more bass to survive through at least one spawning season. In Louisiana, bass generally grow to nearly 12 inches in their first year and begin to spawn in their first spring.

The plan in the Atchafalaya Basin worked exceptionally well. After a year, anglers caught many tiny bass; then they started catching a few keepers. By the late 1990s, Atchafalaya Basin anglers bragged about some of the best bass fishing in years. The system even produced a few 10-pounders, something that had never happened previously.

“Usually, it takes at least two to three years for fish to recover in an area,” Rogillio said. “We’re starting to see some improvement now. People are starting to catch some fish. With more Florida bass in the system, the potential for producing a 10-pound or better largemouth bass greatly increases. In a few years, some of those areas stocked with Florida bass might start producing some really impressive fish.”