Lake Management
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Clean and Maintain Water Features
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Big Beaver
Tall Beaver
No Beaver
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The company provides the following services....
- Treat noxious aquatic vegetation
- Apply dye, lime and fertilizer as needed
- Treat silt problems
- Monitor water quality every visit (normal appearance, color, smell)
- Perform routine water quality analysis quarterly (hardness, ph, alkalinity, nitrited, nitrates, phosphates)
- Meet with staff from Lake personnel and make verbal or written recommendations as requested on lake/pond management techniques
- Secure fish as needed
- Conduct an annual fish population survey on fishing lakes
- Visit and inspect each lake/pond on a timely basis as requested by owner
- Provide monthly billings. Each billing will include details as to base monthly cost plus cost and quality of chemicals, additional services.
| | BEFORE AND AFTER
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Water hyacinth infestation after remediation (mouseover for Before)
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Hydrilla infestation after remediation (mouseover for Before)
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| Old lakes never die if properly maintained.
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Talk bass fishing with almost anyone and it won't be long until they mention a favorite old lake that provided some of the best times of their life. Before long, they'll usually comment on how the fishing went sour and about the beautiful clear black water turning muddy.
This is common, on small lakes and large ones, except that on the big impoundments, it just takes longer to happen. I had all this explained to me the other day while visiting a typical good lake gone bad with Billy Cooper, a fishery biologist and Houstonian.
One of Billy's main projects right now is bringing back the old McCullough Tool Co. lake at Danbury, a fishing hole a lot of Houstonians will remember, both for duck hunting and bass action.
Built in the early 1950's, the 120-acre impoundment was the talk of the area for a long time, and was especially popular with the folks who could fish it because getting there from Houston only took about 45 minutes. But as the lake aged, the fishing tapered off to nothing. The water got muddy, and then the only recreational value the lake had was duck hunting in the winter.
As the lake got older, even the ducks almost quit it because of the undesirable vegetation that took over.
That's when the management at Danbury Fish Farms - the same place where you can go catch your own catfish by the pound - called in the lake doctor. At the same time, they decided to turn it back into a club lake.
Billy came in, drained the lake completely, and killed everything left in the scattered potholes. Then came heavy farming equipment that turned under all the vegetation, allowing the life-giving air to get back in the soil. In the following months, they planted the bottom with desirable vegetation, which would also provide food for wintering waterfowl and additional cover for the fish they were going to stock.
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Billy said that when you plant a crop in the field, you want only one thing. In a lake, he pointed out, it's the same way. If you want big bass, you don't mix catfish, crappie and bream." Anyone who stocks bream in a lake is just creating problems ahead of schedule," he said. "those perch are going to get in there anyway."
He said that a farmer who plants beans, corn, cotton and wheat in the same field doesn't get a good crop of anything, and it's the same way with a lake.
There's just so much nutrition in the water," he said, "and if you split that four ways, everything's going to suffer."
Billy pointed out that the cover they planted in the lake for the bass is also good duck food. He said the teal covered them up last year, and by the time they were gone, the big ducks began moving in.
We've turned it around completely," the long-time fishery biologist - who also works on vegetation control - said, "now, the lake will provide recreation 12 months out of the year instead of just fair duck hunting in the winter.
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4426 Lemac
Houston, Texas 77096
Phone: 713-729-1105
Fax: 713-729-1105
Email: lake_dr@msn.com
Billy D. Cooper
Aquatic Biologist
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