By Louie Stout
Good fishing isn’t entirely dependent on fish stockings or bag and size limits.
The challenges facing fish managers of today have less to do with those matters and more to do with what is happening on land around our waters.
As in land management.
Admittedly, that topic isn’t as stimulating as reports of big fish catches, large stockings or successful spawns.
But it has a direct affect, and perhaps a serious adverse effect, on the future of successful fishing.
Think about it: water runs off farm fields, parking lots and neighborhood developments, trickles into rivers and ditches and ultimately wind up in lakes connected to those streams. That water carries sediment, phosphates and nitrates, all of which have a negative effect on habitat and water quality, which in turn affects fish, especially during and after the spawn.
Federal, state, and county conservation districts have worked hard for year to get land users to alter their practices that would reduce runoff and allow our waters to improve.
Yet we still see crops planted fence row to fence row and right up to the edge of ditches and streams.
Conservationists have long believed that better land use such as no till, use of cover crops and filter strips with grass borders along ditches and streams would reduce runoff pollution substantially.
Farmers have been reluctant. It can be pricey, and frankly, there has been no documentation that it truly works.
That is, until now, thanks to a 10-year study by Manchester College on two streams that empty into Central Indiana’s Eel River.
Some 10 years ago, Dr. Jerry Sweeten, an environmental science professor at the college, obtained federal and state grant money from the EPA and Indiana legislature to institute scientific tests and evaluate better land management practices’ effect on rivers and streams.
“The Natural Resources Conservation Service has been promoting these practices for 50 years but there has been no scientific data to show it works – until now,” said Ed Braun, a retired Indiana DNR fish biologist who works as a volunteer with Sweeten. “It’s the first time anywhere in the world that someone has provided scientific proof that it works.”
Some 25 participating farmers along Paw Paw Creek and Bear Grass Creek - streams that empty into the Eel River - received cost/share money to implement specific land projects designed to retain sediment and water run-off.
Braun said water tests were made for two years before the farmers made land changes and for six years afterwards.
Machines that sample stream water were installed and samples were taken every four hours, unless there was a heavy rain event and then samples were taken on the hour.
The six-year results were outstanding. Sediment was reduced 25 percent, nitrates were down 30 percent and phosphates dropped 40 percent.
Farmers benefited, too. They preserved topsoil, nutrients and water. The study revealed that the crop yield among those farmers who participated was nearly 50 percent higher than those nearby who didn’t.
Braun said Sweeten hopes to expand the project to other areas of the Eel River and is trying to procure more funding.
These projects are needed to further demonstrate how we can clean up our lakes and rivers while improving crop yields for farmers.
Everybody wins, including the fish.