Lake Management Nashville: Region-Specific Knowledge is Key

Imagine you were looking for a heart surgeon, and you came across the website of a doctor who claimed to be the leading surgeon in Nashville. You were briefly encouraged, thinking you had found your doctor, the person to trust your health with; until you dug a little deeper and found that this same doctor had had multiple complaints filed against him by former patients, had even had a couple patients die on his operating table. How would you feel then about him claiming to be the best? Then imagine further that you discovered that this doctor didn’t even live in Tennessee, but was travelling here from two states away just to take people’s money and botch their surgeries. What would you think then about that doctor?

There are not one but multiple lake management companies working in Nashville and Williamson County and the surrounding area that claim not to be among the best, but the best, lake management company working in this region. And you only have to read a couple of their reviews on Google to discover that they are anything but the best. (Note: bad reviews can indeed happen even to the best companies; we have had a handful over the years; but note that almost all of our negative reviews have no narrative whatsoever, and are just a one-star rating, because all of those ratings came from people who never did business with our company and were just trying to harm our business.)

Now imagine that that heart surgeon boasted on his website about helping his patients achieve adequate fat stores in their bodies to withstand Nashville or Franklin winters. You would probably be aghast that such an incompetent person could even be allowed to practice cardiovascular medicine, much less get away with claiming in his advertising that he was the best. Perhaps at that point you did some more research and discovered that this particular surgeon hailed from Alaska, and you then wondered why in the world he would treat patients here like he did ones in a completely different climate?

Both those lake management companies alluded to above happen to be boasting about a service they offer that is indeed a valid and useful service in colder northern states where they are headquarted; that same practice here, especially when presented to landowners as something that every Nashville or Franklin lake or pond needs, is wildly bad information, and incompetent.

Monthly fertilization is a staple lake and pond management technique that has been employed across the South for nearly a hundred years. Even government publications on lake and pond management, which often contain outdated information on topics such as fish stocking, invariably will have a section, often an entire chapter, on fertilization. TWRA’s booklet on lake and pond management has an entire chapter, and recommends the practice; Auburn University, widely regarded as the premiere fisheries program in the country, has a chapter on fertilization in their online publication on lake and pond management. The University of Georgia has a chapter on fertilization in their lake and pond management publication, as does Texas A & M University, as does even the University of Florida (Florida is known for having fertile soil and shallow lakes and ponds, a combination which often leads to excess weed growth). Mississippi State University notes that there can be drawbacks to fertilization, but also notes that it is necessary - not optional, necessary - in ponds managed for trophy bass. Kentucky State University’s publication on lake and pond management goes so far as to state that fertilization is the single most important thing one can do to increase fish production in a private lake or pond, citing studies that have found that fertilized ponds produce two to four times as many pounds of fish per acre as unfertilized ones.

Fertilizing a lake or pond is adding nutrients, specifically phosphorus and nitrogen, to feed phytoplankton, the microscopic algae that give water its green color; phytoplankton are the foundation of the food chain, whether one is talking about a pond or the open ocean; when phytoplankton numbers go up, there is more food for zooplankton and aquatic invertebrates, which in turn provides more food for small fish, and the food chain of the lake or pond is in effect turbo-charged: more food, faster fish growth, more fish and more big fish. That’s why all those government publications recommend it, and further why lake management companies that have actually been working in this region for decades and didn’t come here ten minutes ago trying to make a quick buck, actually use fertilization as a staple, essential management technique.

Both of those lake management companies who come here from multiple states north of here make a big deal on their websites on how they are experts at nutrient reduction - as in, taking the food out of the food chain in your lake or pond. As in wiping out the food chain at its base. They’re bragging on how they can make sure your fish stay small because they have nothing to eat.

Nutrient reduction has its place in lake management in a northern climate where lakes and ponds are covered with ice for months at a time; in that scenario, if too much phytoplankton is in the water column when the lake ices over, the phytoplankton can remove enough oxygen from the water as it decomposes from lack of sunlight to cause a fish kill. Many northern states also have more fertile soil than what the average Nashville or Franklin pond will have, further reducing the need for fertilization.

But Nashville is not Cincinnati or Baltimore. And managing a Nashville lake or pond as though it were located in one of those Yankee states is not just incompetent, it’s negligent. And when one goes further and markets one’s negligence as excellence, well, that’s just dishonest.

When I was doing my master’s in fisheries science at the University of Florida, we were taught a saying that fisheries biologists have when assessing a private lake or pond: clear water is sterile water. Clear water has little phytoplankton, which in turn means there is a weak food chain, which in turn means the lake or pond won’t support many fish, and the few fish it does support won’t get big. A fundamental test that any fisheries biologist trained in a southern state will use whenever evaluating the health of a fishery in a private lake or pond is water visibility: if the water is too clear, the biologist knows there isn’t much of a food chain, and there will be few and small fish.

If you have a Nashville lake or pond and all you care about is having it look like a swimming pool, if you never fish and don’t care if anyone ever catches even a decent-sized fish from your water, then those northern-based companies are for you. If on the other hand you actually bought or built your lake or pond to be your own personal honeyhole, and you dream of big fish, stay away from the people who can’t even be bothered to learn the difference between your water and water five hundred miles from here. We were founded and are run by someone who grew up fishing Tennessee lakes and ponds and has been managing them since 1987; we know how to manage your water to give you the fishing you dream of.