Outdoor Notes: Survivor or new stock?

• Published: May 11, 2008 - Page: 16C - UPDATED: 12:05 a.m.

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Crystal Boudreau was elated when she sent the photo of her fishing husband Michael, especially with the 8-pound, 10-ounce largemouth bass he was holding.

Michael Boudreau was fishing in a pond at Head of Island, the stretch of land that lies between Blind River and the Amite River.

It’s so named because it’s the northernmost boundary — the “head” — of the Isle of Orleans. It’s a historic piece of Louisiana bounded by the Mississippi River at Bayou Manchac. It runs into waters leading into Lake Maurepas, then to Lake Pontchartrain, through The Rigolets and around the Mississippi River delta back to the Mississippi River.

Hurricane Katrina devastated the area, destroying marsh, swamp and upland habitat.

And tens of thousands of fish were killed, victims of one or several forces, not the least of which was a wall of saltwater driven north from the Gulf of Mexico by the storm.

Then, as happened to the Atchafalaya Basin when Hurricane Andrew ran through it nearly 16 years ago, a problem developed with organic matter decaying and sucking all the dissolved oxygen from the water.

Those two deadly forces were at work in the rivers, bayous, canals and lakes across the Florida Parishes.

The Department of Wildlife and Fisheries’ Inland Fisheries Section went on a continuous monitoring program within days after Katrina’s passage.

In early November 2005, the first stocking of catfish went into the affected rivers. Water quality and forage stocks (minnows and shad) had recovered.

More than 2 million bass, bluegill and catfish fingerlings are scheduled for restocking in the first three-year plan to revive Florida Parishes waters. Stockings of the three species will come this month, then during the summer and fall.

The question now is whether Boudreau’s fish survived the storm or if it was one of the Florida-strain largemouths that came in after the storm.

The best guess is that it’s among the rare survivors, though one biologist confided that growth rates in ideal conditions could have a near three-year-old bass at 8 or so pounds.

After you have a bass from the right gene pool — and Florida-strain bass are fast growers — mild winters; the availability of food; the lack of other adult predator fish; and stable, highly oxygenated water are growth-rate factors.