Alabama Power and the U.S. Forestry Service hydro-seed the shoreline of Smith Lake. Four acres at Houston Recreational Area and Clear Creek Recreational area were seeded today during the annual winter draw down of the lake.
A team of Alabama Power and U.S. Forestry employees used a pontoon boat specially rigged with a spray rig and 150 gallon tank. They mixed cool weather cereal grains of oats and wheat and rye grass with fertilizer and a special mulch made of grounded up newspaper, added water and sprayed the mixture along the bank.
It benefits fish similar to the way a food plot benefits deer. It not quite as direct as growing clover and corn in a green field and deer eat it. In this case the grasses attract insects and when flooded, small fish to the cover of the grass. Then larger fish are attracted to the new food source.
The grass/grain mixture will sprout in 7 days and continue growing until the water levels rise in the spring. This same process is used a Weiss and Logan Martin Lakes.
Because Smith Lake is a storage reservoir and drawn down each winter, the lake is void of many native weeds and grasses fish, especially newly hatched fish, use as cover. The seeding areas exposed during the winter enhances habitat for spawning and provides protective cover for juveniles as water levels return to full pool in the spring – flooding these planted cereal grains.
Alabama Power operates 14 hydroelectric facilities on the Coosa, Tallapoosa and Black Warrior rivers.
2014 Alabama Media Group