TWRA ANNOUNCES AVAILABILITY OF 2020-21 CLEAN STREAM
GRANTS TO ASSIST WITH HABITAT PROTECTION PROGRAM
NASHVILLE --- The Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency is announcing the availability of grant dollars to assist cities, schools, community organizations, civic groups, watershed organizations, and conservation groups, etc., with stream clean-up projects and planting projects during the 2020-21 fiscal year.
Five grants, at a maximum of $1,000 each, are available for each of TWRA’s four regional Aquatic Habitat Protection projects (a total of $5,000 per region). The funds will be obligated as grants, so the grantee must have a nonprofit tax number. The application deadline for the program is June 30, 2020. The projects are to be completed, the money spent, and a report submitted by June 30, 2021.
The grant money could be used to buy supplies such as rakes, work gloves, and garbage bags. Also, it could be used to pay disposal fees for solid waste and tire removal or to provide promotional items like project advertisement or T‑shirts and refreshments for volunteer support.
Grant proposals should include the applicant organization’s name, tax ID number, address, phone, and name of a contact person authorized to enter into contractual agreement on behalf of the organization. The proposal should also include the name of the stream, county or counties involved, and the project area and description.
Contact TWRA’s Della Sawyers at (615) 781-6577 or by email at della.sawyers@tn.gov with any questions. For additional information, interested persons may also contact a regional Aquatic Habitat Protection Biologist at the TWRA regional offices.
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MUSKY STOCKING PROGRAM SHOWS SUCCESS IN PARKSVILLE
Catching a trophy musky, or any size for the matter, can be an incredible angling experience. The Cumberland and Tennessee River Basins provide exciting and unique opportunities for Tennessee musky anglers. Parksville Reservoir was the final water within the historic musky range to be targeted for establishing a musky fishery. In October 2017, TWRA stocked 600 musky in Parksville Reservoir with an average size of 13 inches. In 2019, an additional stocking of 1,000 fish averaging just over eight and a half inches in length occurred.
The TWRA Region 3 Reservoir Fisheries Crew monitors sport fish populations in Parksville Reservoir annually and continue to track the progress of this restoration project. Recent data was collected during their semi-annual spring electrofishing surveys. These surveys are conducted to collect data in order to evaluate fish populations. Region 3 Fisheries Reservoirs Manager Mike Jolley stated, “Based on the reports gathered thus far, we are excited about the musky that are showing up as a result of this stocking project. We plan to stock more musky in Parksville in the future as fish are available. Our anglers are sharing successes too. We’ve received several photos and reports of fish over 30 inches.”
Musky have the potential to live relatively long lives and achieve large weights as adults. The current state record musky was caught on Melton Hill Reservoir on March 2, 2017 and weighed 43 lbs. 14 oz. TWRA restoration efforts for this native fish have been in existence since the 1980’s.
Stocked fish were obtained from the Kentucky Department of Fish and Wildlife. Kentucky muskies are the sub-species that once occurred throughout tributaries of the Tennessee and Cumberland Rivers. Musky in Parksville Reservoir will be managed under the statewide regulation of one fish per day creel limit and a 36 inch minimum length limit (MLL). Musky in Parksville will likely reach the 36 inch MLL in three to six years. Musky tend to target sucker and shad species as food, which are available in Parksville. Parksville provides good habitat (e.g. laydowns, woody debris, river flow) which will further ensure the success of this musky stocking project. Parksville Reservoir was created in 1911 by the creation of Parksville Dam on the Ocoee River and is operated by the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA). This reservoir encompasses an area of 1,930 acres and is located within the Cherokee National Forest in southeast Tennessee.
The musky is not the only species TWRA is actively stocking in Parksville. The agency is also stocking black-nose black crappie, walleye, redear sunfish, bluegill, and trout. Unfortunately Parksville reservoir has also been the recipient of unsanctioned introductions of non-native fish such as Alabama bass and blueback herring. These non-native fish have a negative impact on native fish that inhabit Parksville such as largemouth bass.
Some anglers have voiced concerns that top predators like musky will impact other game fish, but this has not been the case in other waters where musky fisheries are managed. Dale Hollow Reservoir is a great example. Musky have been present since the 1950’s, yet there is great fishing for smallmouth and largemouth bass, walleye, and crappie. Other Region 3 reservoirs such as Center Hill, Great Falls and Watts Bar also have successful musky fisheries. Find more at tnwildlife.org.
Photo: Fisheries technician Felix Fugate holds a 33-inch musky observed during annual spring surveys. This fish was stocked in 2016.
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TWRA REQUESTS PUBLIC INPUT ON
PROPOSED 2020-21, 2021-22 HUNTING REGULATIONS
NASHVILLE --- The Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency is now soliciting comments on the proposed 2020-21 and 2021-22 hunting seasons’ regulations that were made at the April meeting of the Tennessee Fish and Wildlife Commission. This is an opportunity for the public to share ideas and concerns about the proposed hunting regulations with TWRA staff.
A public comment period on the proposals will be open until May 15. The proposals can be viewed on the TWRA website on the Hunting in Tennessee page.
Public comments will be considered by TWRA’s Wildlife Division staff and may be presented as proposals for regulation changes. Comments may be submitted by mail to: Hunting Season Comments, TWRA, Wildlife Division, 5107 Edmondson Pike, Nashville, TN 37211 or emailed to Twra.huntingcomments@tn.gov.
Please include “Hunting Season Comments” on the subject line of emailed submissions.
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BODY OF ANGLER RECOVERED ON CENTER HILL LAKE
Crossville—TWRA officers responded to a call of a missing angler on Center Hill Lake, just after 11 a.m. today, April 29. Quinn Hogan, a 36-year-old Putnam County resident, was reported missing by a friend. Hogan was reported as fishing on Center Hill Lake the previous afternoon and friends looking for Hogan, found his truck at the Cookeville boat dock today. Three TWRA boats and two Dekalb County rescue boats searched and found the bass fishing boat of the missing angler around 12:30 p.m. The boat was adrift in a cove near to the Cookeville Boat Dock.
TWRA officers used GPS forensic tracking to determine the area the boat went adrift. The TWRA Remote Operated Vehicle was deployed and quickly located Hogan’s body at 4:30 p.m. in eight feet of water, despite heavy rains in the area. Hogan’s body was recovered near the area the boat was found.
Hogan was wearing a self-inflating personal floatation device. The device was not inflated. The body was recovered and taken to the Davidson County Medical Examiner’s office. The incident remains under investigation.
As weather warms and boating activities increase, TWRA reminds boaters to wear life jackets and let friends and family know your plans. Find more about safe boating at tnwildlife.org.
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PUBLIC INVITED TO HELP JUDGE IN PHOTO
CONTEST FOR ANNUAL CALENDAR ISSUE
NASHVILLE --- The Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency is asking the public to help select the winning photos that will appear in the annual calendar issue of Tennessee Wildlife magazine.
The entry period for the contest for this year’s publication ended in March and the entries have been screened for the voting process. Place your votes for this year’s calendar on the TWRA website at www.tnwildlife.org. The contest icon is located on the front page. Voters may select one photo per day. Voting will be available through midnight (CDT) Sunday, May 10.
After tabulation, the winning selections will appear in the 2020-21 calendar which will be available in July in the summer issue of Tennessee Wildlife. The 2020-21 calendar begins with the month of August as hunting season dates are scheduled to begin.
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TWRA OFFERS PRACTICES TO FOLLOW FOR RECREATIONAL BOATING
NASHVILLE --- When enjoying recreational boating, the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency says it is important to observe the following practices to protect yourself and others and slow the spread of Covid-19:
- Only boat with those in your immediate household: no guests or outside-of-household family.
- Boat close to home. Make direct trips to local accesses only. Go right from your home to the access and back.
- Maintain distance at fuel and community docks.
- When fueling, wash your hands as you would when car fueling. If soap and water are not readily available, use a hand sanitizer that contains at least 60 percent alcohol. Cover all surfaces of your hands and rub them together until they feel dry. Do not touch your eyes, nose, and mouth with unwashed hands.
- No beaching or rafting with other boats. Maintain social distance of 6 to 10 feet.
- If you have been diagnosed or are exhibiting symptoms consistent with Covid-19 (including fever, cough, or difficulty breathing), you should not leave your home at all, including to participate in outdoor recreation. This self-isolation period should extend for at least 7 days after illness begins and 72 hours of being fever-free without using fever-reducing medications and resolution of other symptoms.
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From TSSAA:
Unwelcome Reality: Coaching Students Through Daunting Times
Leadership Makes a Difference, Now and in the Future
TSSAA - Greg McCullough had just arrived inside MTSU's Murphy Center for the Thursday games at the Tennessee Girls’ State Basketball Championships. But as the Memphis Central principal and TSSAA Board of Control Vice President would soon come to find out, the sports world and society writ large had begun the painful process of shutting down social activities due to the COVID-19 coronavirus. The pandemic was raging and closing in fast on the storied Glass House.
“As things were unfolding, we’re sitting there watching games, and big-time college tournaments were being cancelled,” McCullough said. “It was just really a weird, surreal feeling. Plans would be made, then changed in hours.
“That Thursday, sitting in the stands at Girls’ State, Mr. Childress was even telling us board members that we couldn't come back tomorrow. At that time, teams were going to be playing in this huge arena in front of 100 select people."
Ultimately, the tournament would be halted Thursday night.
"I cannot imagine," McCullough added, "to have worked that hard and not gotten the chance to finish that dream, that’s a tough pill to swallow. But we just try to find the positive we can get out of it.”
Mr. Childress, as in TSSAA Executive Director Bernard Childress, went to great lengths in the weeks after the state tournament was suspended, with input from every corner of the state, in an effort to find a method to salvage the final games of the boys’ and girls’ basketball seasons, as well as scrape together some semblance of a spring sports season.
Greg Wyant, longtime football coach and athletics director at Murfreesboro's Siegel High School, remembers offering a parting piece of advice for students heading home on a cruel Friday the 13th.
“Many kids on the track team were in my weightlifting class that afternoon and I remember telling them before they walked out for the weekend that you need to be mentally prepared to not be here Monday and maybe not run track the rest of the season. Enjoy your meet on Saturday; it might be the last for a while if not for the year,” Wyant said. “The NBA was shutting down, then the MLB, then the cancellation of the NCAA Tournament, you could really see the writing on the wall. I just tried to talk to them and mentally prepare them for what the possibilities could be.
“I think a lot of the kids are a lot like a lot of us as adults, like, ‘Yeah, sure. No way that’s going to happen.’ But nobody’s ever seen anything like this."
Barely one month later, on April 15, those collective efforts were rendered moot when Gov. Bill Lee said the Volunteer State’s school buildings should remain closed through the end of the academic year. The TSSAA immediately followed through with the formal decision to cancel all remaining interscholastic sports for the academic year, an eventuality faced by high school associations across the country.
In speaking to a variety of coaches, administrators and leaders throughout the state of Tennessee, the hope moving forward centers around gradually transforming these unprecedented obstacles into potential life lessons.
“I think that, in the same way that sports provide teaching moments — how to win and how to lose, be respectful to teammates and opponents, how to be responsible and accountable — this experience has provided us with many of the same teaching opportunities and coaches are using it this way,” said Father Ryan Athletics Director Ann Mullins, “We talk to athletes about dealing with obstacles, overcoming adversity, gaining perspective.
“For as important as athletics are to the school community, their importance takes a backseat to the struggles that so many in the community and in the nation are facing. I think that is possibly the most important teaching moment for us as an athletic department and as a coach, period. We follow the lead of our president (Jim McIntyre) and principal (Paul Davis) who do a phenomenal job in helping us face these challenges.”
Fulton’s Jody Wright, the school’s state-title-winning boys’ basketball coach as well as athletics director and assistant principal at the Knoxville school, also said this unprecedented crisis has coerced a refreshed perspective.
“One of the things that I think is a really sound message is that once we get out of this that we as coaches can point to this situation and say: We don’t know what tomorrow holds,” Wright said. “God gives us today. So many times we take for granted our day, the moment we have, we take those things for granted. Seize the day, as the saying goes.
“Coaches have a tremendous opportunity coming out of this to teach cherishing what you have, cherishing the time we have and embracing the moment.”
Coaches and schools throughout the state are finding different ways to honor their students, athletes or otherwise, as this now-digital academic year winds towards its end.
Gatlinburg-Pittman soccer coaches Caleb Keener and Zach Schrandt, for example, led a socially-distanced convoy of cars past the house of a senior player this month to honk happy birthday wishes.
Mullins joined Father Ryan’s entire leadership team in distributing Class of 2020 graduation blankets and yard signs around Nashville on a recent Friday.
In Memphis, McCullough and others are finding as many ways as possible to engage with their now-distanced youths.
“We’re trying in our district to address our kids much as we can,” McCullough said. “This is uncharted territory, scary for a lot of people, and we want to remind them to stay safe and let them know, ‘We miss you.’ The athletic piece is a big part, but right now our seniors don’t get to experience prom, graduation. We just have to live with the hope that everything will get better.
“There are a lot of difficult things about this. I think as humans, we're always sitting back thinking about, ‘I wish I’d known then what I know now. I would have done this or that, or maybe I would have practiced harder.’ But if you’re a competitor you really have to live in the moment. You can only play for so long. Even if you’re LeBron James, you can still only play for so long. You have to live in the moments.”
These hardships are not only teaching tools for the youth. Administrators are wondering what school buildings and classrooms might look like in the fall; coaches are uncertain about summer camps, practices or a reasonable facsimile for their fall schedules.
What is developing through this challenge, however, is a greater coach-to-coach, region-to-region and sport-to-sport camaraderie.
“I have found that we, as athletics directors, are in different email groups with TSSAA, TIAAA, NAIS and different independent schools, and it’s really been awesome,” said Mullins, a former standout volleyball player at Father Ryan, the University of Tennessee and Lipscomb University. “It’s great to see how all of the athletic directors and principals and all of the heads of schools have come together, even over email, to float different ideas about what they’re doing or what their teachers and coaches are doing and how they are staying in communication.
“I think it definitely has hit the reset button for us and I think it has brought us closer together. And I am very much looking forward to working with other schools for the betterment of our students and of our student-athletes.”
“Everybody is affected,” said Wright, a Greater Knoxville Sports Hall of Fame inductee. “I call it the fraternity of coaches. We compete hard against each other, we want to win, but only that other coach across the sidelines knows what you go through before the game and how hard you work.
“There is a little bit of kindred spirit growing because it's not affected just one town, one part of the state, one sport. We’re all not having daily contact with kids in the way we are used to as teachers and coaches, and all coaches are in the same boat and this gives us all some common ground, we can all empathize.”
McCullough eyes a greater horizon.
“We hope that this can bring us together,” McCullough said. “Not only just the state but in the country, we’re such a divided country and everything is so political right now. My thing is we’re all Americans here and we've got to figure this out. We’ve got to help each other, stay safe, and help with finances when it’s bad for this person or that person.
"We have a tendency to leave situations behind. But I think the best teaching is going to come after we get back to some normalcy. We shouldn't forget what has happened, and hopefully we look back and say, ‘We came through this together,’ and if we all come together, we can make it through this and get better and be prepared for it. And we can help kids live in the moment and say, ‘Hey, you never know, this might be your last game. Live in that moment and play hard and represent your school and your community and appreciate the chance to compete.’”
