Volunteers help with fish habitat enhancement

On March 23, 2011, six LMRA members (Bobby Borden, Chuck Hicks, Francis Alread, Bud Nason, B.J. Barnett and Will Denton) assisted Alabama Power with their Fish Habitat Enhancement program, sinking recycled Christmas trees in the Real Island area. APCo has a system, refined over many trips, that works really well. The first truck arrives and unloades 12-inch concrete blocks at the water's edge, a second truck rolls in with 160 trees and a third truck with a rig to unload the trees.

Volunteers begin to tie the trees in bundles of four and attach a float to one tree in each bundle. The work boat pulls up, five bundles are loaded aboard and three blocks are tied to each bundle. The boat goes to a preselected location where the five bundles (20 trees) are pushed off and the GPS coordinates are marked. With one work boat the whole process is completed in about five hours. With a second boat it is even faster.

Alabama Power posts Fish Habitat Enhancement GPS Coordinates for APCo Reservoirs at: http://www.alabamapower.com/fishdata. Many thanks to Alabama Power for their efforts to improve fishing on their reservoirs across the state.