After months empty of wildlife, the Spring Lake Park pond again is home to hundreds of fish.
On Wednesday, Texas Parks and Wildlife fisheries experts caught about 500 bluegill, redear and warmouth sunfish, aka bream, in Bringle Lake and then released them into the pond, which was drained for much of 2017 as workers dredged it to a depth of 10 feet.
It was the first of three steps in a process to bring the pond back to life, said Tim Bister, a TPW fisheries biologist. The department will re-introduce largemouth bass into the pond in May and channel catfish sometime in the fall. After that, it still may take a few years for the pond to fully recover.
Before the fish were released, TPW treated the water in which they were transported to kill any microscopic larvae of zebra mussels or other invasive species.
The pond is part of TPW's community fishing lake program and subject to the program's fishing regulations. Fishing is by pole and line only, and anglers may use no more than two poles while fishing.
There is no minimum length or daily bag limit on sunfish in community fishing lakes, but Bister said best practice for Spring Lake Park would be to refrain from fishing there until populations have some time to recover.
Introducing fish into the pond is best left to experts, and any unauthorized person doing so would be in violation of TPW code, Bister said.
About 15 Canada geese have returned to the pond on their own, but the ducks once familiar to park visitors have not.
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