Could Zebra Mussels Produce Record Panfish?

NEWS TRAVELS FAST when somebody reels in a great big fish. Just ask John Galbraith of Lake Havasu City, Arizona.

Galbraith is the owner of Bass Tackle Masters on Lake Havasu, a scenic, Colorado River reservoir along Arizona/California border. He was at his shop last May when Wisconsin angler Thomas Farchione walked in with a whale of a redear sunfish and asked to have it weighed on certified scales.

Galbraith has seen plenty of big redears over the years. His certified scales confirmed that Farchione’s catch was something special.

The enormous sunfish tipped the scale to a previously unheard-of 6.30 pounds. It’s a pending All-Tackle World Record redear sunfish for the International Game Fish Assoc.

Measuring 17 inches long with a 20-inch girth, the fish eclipses the former world record of 5.78 pounds caught in 2014 by Hector Brito. Brito’s fish topped Robert Lawler’s 2011 world record of 5.55 pounds.

Both previous world records were also caught from Lake Havasu, a 19,300-acre reservoir that is fast becoming known as the Lake Fork of trophy redear lakes. Galbraith has an intimate knowledge of the lake’s history of kicking out giant sunfish. He weighed both of the previous world records.

Galbraith says he has averaged weighing 15 to 20 redears in the four-pound range and three to four fish topping five pounds per year over the last two years.

What gives with all super-sized redear sunfish at Havasu? No one knows for certain, but some experts and local anglers believe it could be linked to something in the water. Namely, quagga mussels.

Like the invasive zebra mussels that have proliferated in many Texas lakes in recent times, quagga mussels are native to eastern Europe. Quaggas were first discovered in the United States in 1989 after foreign ships carrying microscopic quagga larvae discharged their ballast water into the Great Lakes.

The mussels have since been confirmed in several western lakes, including Lake Havasu in 2007.  The mussels’ razor-sharp shells can be problematic for humans. They cause significant damage to water systems by clogging intakes if not kept in check. However, many locals contend the mollusks have been a blessing to Havasu’s prolific redear fishery.

The belief is the quaggas provide an abundant, high protein food source to complement other forage such as red swamp crawfish and grass shrimp. Also known as “shellcrackers,” redear are gifted with pharyngeal teeth in their throats that help the panfish crush the mussels’ hard shells to get at the goodies inside.

Galbraith has owned his shop for nearly 20 years. Over the last decade, he’s watched Havasu transition from an outstanding redear fishery to one that is producing fish of colossal proportions on a regular basis.

“In my opinion the mussels have had everything to do with it,” he said. “The lake record was a three pounder when the quaggas first showed up in 2007, and it’s gotten bigger ever since. Going from a three-pound lake record to a 6.30-pounder with three world records in a short time is no coincidence. The quaggas are the reason.”

Fisheries biologist Ty Hardymon with the Arizona Game and Fish Department says he believes it’s entirely possible that quagga mussels may be contributing to the trophy fish explosion at Havasu, but he doesn’t think the invasive mollusks deserve all the credit.

“It could be that the quaggas are part of a perfect storm out there,” Hardymon said. “I think there are a number of factors that play in that lake. It’s definitely possible, or even highly likely that the quagga mussels are contributing the growth of those fish.

“I believe it also has to do with the extended growing season allowed by the warm climate, habitat availability and a variety of other resources. Plus, as a result of habitat selection, redears aren’t likely to encounter predators in Lake Havasu that will prey on them once they reach a certain size.”

Zebra mussels—a cousin to the quagga—were first discovered in Lake Texoma in 2009 and have since proliferated in a host of other Texas lakes. Two dozen Texas impoundments are now considered “infested” with zebras.

Redear sunfish coexist with zebra mussels in several Texas lakes. However, there have been no reports that sunfish are growing at accelerated rates in any of those waters, according to Craig Bonds, inland fisheries director with the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department.

But that doesn’t mean it couldn’t happen. Bonds thinks it would be pretty cool if it did.

“We can go on all day talking about the negative consequences of zebra mussels,” he said. “But if we have to adapt to live with them in places where they already exist, it would be nice if not all of the effects are negative. If some larger redears are in some of these lakes infested with zebra mussels, that would be a silver lining in my book.”

 

Email Matt Williams at ContactUs@fishgame.com

 

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