Lakes and Parks Superintendent Rick Echols tries to make sure each of Bella Vista's seven man-made lakes is unique.
All of the lakes are stocked with fish, although not all receive the same types of fish. For example, Lake Brittany is the only Bella Vista Lake with a trout fishery. The trout are stocked several times each winter.
When Echols took over as fish biologist for the Property Owners Association, he started a program to raise his own fish, which would save on the cost of stocking fish.
Each year, he begins at Lake Avalon where there is a heated fishing dock. One corner of the dock has become a fish hatchery. When the "fry" reach a certain size, they are moved to a POA pond.
Since 2016 Echols has been using ponds on POA golf courses. Each pond is first drained and refilled before the fry are added. Although he's has had some success, there are issues with the golf course ponds.
He was most successful that first year, Echols said recently, but while the fish were healthy, there were some permitting issues that delayed the stocking process. Even though the lakes are private, the state's Game and Fish Commission regulates them. The delay that first year meant that some fish were lost.
The only other year that didn't include a flood was 2018, he said.
When the golf courses flood, the fry are usually lost. Flood waters bring in larger fish that will eat the fry and they also wash the fry out of the pond into Little Sugar Creek. It's unlikely they survive in the creek, he said.
This year, Echols plans to use new aquaculture ponds built just for fish raising. The three ponds are under construction near the Loch Lomond dam. The cost of the ponds, $65,000, was spread across the 2022 and 2023 budgets.
Three small ponds gives him the flexibility to raise more than one species of fish.
Bass, blue gill and channel catfish are in all the lakes, he said. But there are other species stocked in some of the lakes, including blue catfish, hybrid striped bass and saugeye, a hybrid that crosses walleye and sauger.
Echols believes raising his own fish results in significant savings for the POA, especially for the "specialty fish."
Arkansas Game and Fish stock most of the big lakes in the state and private lakes that are stocked by individuals are usually very small. Bella Vista is unique with the need to stock larger, unusual species. so raising those species is definitely cost effective, he said.
Echols said he hopes to use the new aquaculture ponds this spring.