TVA Fisheries Biologist Jon Michael Mollish shows three different type of bass that were sampled during the fish survey at Boone Lake on Wednesday.
TVA officials electrofish to sample the quality of the fish around the lake. Fifteen sites around the lake are sampled. With the dam project nearing completion, the lake levels are rising to levels not seen in over five years.
TVA Fisheries Biologist Jon Michael Mollish shows a smallmouth bass that was sampled during the fish survey at Boone Lake on Wednesday.
TVA Fisheries Biologist Jon Michael Mollish shows a channel catfish that was sampled during the fish survey at Boone Lake on Wednesday.
TVA Fisheries Biologist Jon Michael Mollish shows the teeth on a longnose gar that was sampled during the fish survey at Boone Lake on Wednesday.
TVA release water through the Boone Dam on Wednesday as they continue to control the rising water levels at Boone Lake.
Water levels on Boone Lake continue to rise following the repairs to the dam over the past several years. Full summer pool is expected in July.
Water levels on Boone Lake continue to rise following the repairs to the dam over the past several years. Full summer pool is expected in July.
KINGSPORT, Tenn. — Jon Michael Mollish stood at the bow of a low fishing boat Wednesday afternoon, scanning the waters of a cove in Boone Lake. He dipped a scoop net into the water, pulled it up and dropped the fish writhing inside into a tub of water on the boat. In less than a minute, the process repeated itself.
To the untrained eye, it might have looked like Mollish was either extremely lucky or some kind of hand-fishing guru. But Mollish is a fisheries biologist for the Tennessee Valley Authority. With the three others onboard, he was electrofishing — using a mild electric current to briefly stun fish for capture — to conduct an annual survey of the lake’s fish.
The results of the current survey won’t be ready for a while, possibly not until next winter, according to John Justice, another TVA fisheries biologist.
A team of Tennessee Valley Authority and Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency biologists surveys Boone Lake's fish population to gauge the health of the reservoir as TVA enters the final stages of repairing the dam and raising the lake levels back to normal.
Meanwhile, Justice said, in the roughly six years that Boone Lake’s water levels have been lowered for the Boone Dam repair project, the lake’s fish populations have done surprisingly well. And as the lake levels keep rising, he’s expecting the numbers to go up.
“We’re anticipating a boom,” Justice said. “The fish population usually explodes for a few years [when a lake level rises like this].”
Mollish said that electrofishing is simple: A generator aboard the boat provides the electrical current, which is released into the water through pipes and controlled by a foot pedal and several other safety mechanisms.
He and the other fisheries biologists said the electrical current doesn’t hurt fish and only stuns them for a few seconds — but they added that you definitely don’t want to fall off the boat when it’s live.
From the tank on the boat, Mollish lifted a trio of the black bass that anglers vie for, along with a longnose gar, some bluegills and a gaping catfish. He said the team examines and logs details about every fish, including its weight and length, how well it seems to be eating and whether it has any parasites, lesions or other abnormalities.
“When fish are stressed, they’re more likely to get parasites,” he said. “We haven’t seen anything out of the ordinary so far [during this survey]— that’s a great thing. Everything’s looked pretty normal.”
Justice said that such surveys, which also include information about insects and creatures living in the lakebed, give him and his colleagues a good sense of the lake’s overall status as well as the health of its fish.
“It’s kind of a physical for the reservoir,” he said. “[Fish are] the canary in the coal mine.”
As he steered a boat carrying members of the media, Justice — sporting a neck gaiter decorated with freshwater fish species — said TVA has been surveying Boone Lake’s fish populations since about 1990. Thanks to consistency in the times and locations of the surveys, TVA can use that data to assess long-term trends in fish populations, he said.
The surveys normally happen every two to three years, but since the repair project started, TVA and the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency have been doing them twice a year, Justice said.
The Boone Dam repair project isn’t set to finish until the summer of 2022. But Sam Vinson, the principal project manager, said the lake’s water levels are on schedule to reach their old summer pool level of about 1,380 feet by this July. The water level, which TVA slowly began increasing last fall, is currently being held for the month of May to allow for some testing, he said. It will be allowed to start rising again at the end of the month.
Meanwhile, Justice and the other fisheries biologists said they’re on the lookout for a spike in fish numbers as the lake level creeps higher, partly because of all the new vegetation along the banks. It makes good habitat for fish, he said.
Shannon O’Quinn, another TVA fisheries biologist, said that while the corporation has cleared some patches of trees and other large plants that will end up underwater again, they’ve also worked with the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency to plant low-lying shrubs and install concrete structures for fish habitat.
swade@bristolnews.com | 276-645-2511 | Twitter: @swadely
May 13, 2021 at 04:00PM
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