A scary event is about to happen to our WORLD FAMOUS LAKE TOHO!

I don't mean to attack the Fish and Game in this article, there are quite a few great biologist employed by this agency. These great biologist are not the ones that play the game of politics they are just good men and women that want to create a great place in the outdoors for the public that has employed them to enjoy. Ego or the desire to write their names in the Fish and Game history like some does not drive them, just doing their jobs and creating great fishing. Politics has NO place in biology and the producing of a great fishery.

Lake Toho is scheduled for a drawdown starting in November. This Article is being written to expose the complete disregard for the lake as a Fishery as it is right now. The goal of Fish and Game is set to Make Lake Toho a better fishery, "the best fishery in the World". Sounds great! This great goal is being approached with a total disregard to the quality of "the lake that broke every B.A.S.S. record" just set last year. The Fish and Game seem to think and want you to believe that they are totally responsible for that great event.

NOW THE TRUTH!

For the last ten years the hydrilla has grown out of control on Lake Toho

They, DEP and Fish and Game have desired and are mandated according to Them by Florida law to remove ALL NON-NATIVE PLANTS from all of Florida waters. IF you would like to read the Florida Law for yourself go to http://www.leg.state.fl.us/Statutes title XXVIII, 369.22. You should find this very interesting. A maintenance program is what I call keeping the water usable. Their definition is " A "maintenance program" is a method for the control of nonindigenous aquatic plants in which control techniques are utilized in a coordinated manner on a continuous basis in order to maintain the plant population at the lowest feasible level as determined by the department. This still leaves them in complete control as they determine lowest feasible level.

They have NOT been able eradicate all of the hydrilla but they did remove up to 80% to 95% of the hydrilla on Lake Kissimmee and Lake Istokpoga due to drawdown. After completing this task both lakes have failed to continue to produce fish as they did before the work. To quote Capt. Butch Greenfield about Lake Istokpoga's draw down "draw the lake down, scrape the bottom and build wildlife islands and open spawning grounds to the fish. Sounds great huh? Probably would have worked if they had not of sprayed the weeds prior to drawing down the lake. They killed all the habitat that the fish needed to survive in the deeper holes of the lake. With a lake that is only on the average of 7 feet deep and they pulled it down 3 feet this did not leave a whole lot of area for the fish to live in. Then they kill the hydrilla and leave no habitat or homes for the fish. This left the fish vulnerable to attack from gators, birds, starvation and the elements. Needless to say, large numbers of fish fell victims to the aforementioned."

The attitude of being willing to sacrifice a fishery short term to achieve long term goals is not acceptable. The business that survive from you the fishermen coming to spend your vacations dollars in the area all move or change from fishing related businesses to water skier and personal water craft oriented businesses. Have you ever been to an area and could not find a tackle shop? Fish and Game seem to be willing to say we are sorry to these businesses. To quote Capt. Rob Murchie owner of MFCTOO at Overstreets landing "In my opinion that's what caused the decline in fish population on Lake Kissimmee, they removed somewhere around 19 miles of shoreline vegetation and chemically treated the offshore hydrilla all at about the same time effectively removing a large portion of shore line cover and the offshore cover, thus leaving very little structure for our large fish population to use for habitat, and if you don't have enough habitat you will lose your fish population in my opinion, which is what I believe happened on Lake Kissimmee. To date the Dept. of Fish and Wildlife cannot explain where our fish are, the people from the University of Florida doing shocking for the Dept. of Fish and Wildlife could not find any large concentrations of fish on Lake Kissimmee. They won't admit we have a problem, they say it was just a bump in the system, some bump." Bumps in the road to a Professional fishermen from shiner catcher to bass guide takes food off their table but these biologist still get their pay checks every month. The average fisherman does not make their living from fishing but they do get a lot of enjoyment from time spent catching fish.

Lake Toho is a World-Class fishery now! To make it better may be possible but based on the track record of remove all the vegetation they can and HOPE God puts what needs to be there back I cannot accept. When Lake Kissimmee 35,000 acres was drawdown and in their term restored about 19 miles of shore was scraped, removing about 1 million cubic yards of muck. The proposed plan for Lake Toho 22,400 acres is 6 million cubic yards over 40+ miles of shore. Now that is a ratio Kissimmee, 1 /35000 compared to Toho 6/22400 or 1/3733. That ratio is almost 10 times as much as Lake Kissimmee and they ran over a bump in the road there. WHAT DO THEY EXPECT TO HAPPEN THIS TIME???????? You cannot cook a lemon pie recipe and expect to get a cherry pie results.

Let's review the results of other States that have in their own war to control hydrilla got a less than desired results. Santee Cooper removed hydrilla, reduced fishing productive. Lake Murray removed hydrilla, reduced fishing productive. Lake Gaston, Barkley and Kentucky Lake, Kerr Lake, Curtuck Sound, the list goes on and on with the same results. Consider a change in the way we look at our managing hydrilla, ops "maintenance program" NO let's wait till it's all gone and remember the way it was. The people on the Lake Harris can remember. The tackle shops are reduced to selling food or other items to keep the doors open and most of the guides moved to other areas. But to talk about the Harris Chain DEP says clouds the issue. I know there are other problems surrounding the Harris Chain but I'm one of the guides that had to move to stay in business. I just know they removed the hydrilla and the fish went away! How long how many times does this have to happen before something is changed? I would like to say total coverage of any lake is not a desired end results of the much need change but change in our view of management is needed.

Back to the law that mandates the removal of all non-native plants. This seems to be the case except when it benefits water quality or a pet project of water management or DEP. WHAT? That is a contradiction. Yes except South Florida Water Management and DEP is using the Brazilian Pepper to purify water coming off the sugar cane fields before it runs into the Everglades. The truth is most of the biologist for all of these agencies will privately agree that hydrilla has a great up side. Studies by Biologist from the UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA have shown "40 % coverage of hydrilla provide optimal habitat and are most likely to improve largemouth bass year class strengths". {Borawa et al 1979; Wiley et al. 1984Miranda and Pugh 1997} "Similarly, intermediate coverage of plants may provide the most rapid growth rates of young largemouth bass. {Miranda and Pugh 1997} It has been shown in some lakes up to 80% coverage of hydrilla is beneficial to that ecosystem". Hydrilla is hard to control but not impossible. There are numerous uses for hydrilla, such as livestock food. This does require that we not poison the vegetation less we kill the animals we feed it too. Harvesting is an option.

At this point I would like to address the uses of Grass Carp to control hydrilla. Grass carp are non-selective in the food they eat. They actually eat some other vegetation as a preference before eating hydrilla. If there is not enough vegetation carp can turn carnivorous and eat small fish. I commend the Florida Fish and Game for not using carp as a main stay for trying to control vegetation. Lake Yale, Live Oak Lake, Fairview, Baldwin, Clear Lake, and some small lakes that placement of carp has been tried and to a very big regrets. Fish and Game has even tried to poison the carp to remove them from the lake and they seem to be too smart to eat the poisoned food. The State of South Carolina put Grass Carp in Santee Cooper and is regretting it also. The carp ate all the grass and are now eating the bark off the cypress trees. Please let's learn from people that have made these mistakes before us and never allow carp to be used in our major Lakes again.