Skyla Henry recently completed an eight week American Fisheries Society’s Hutton Internship with AGFC. Skyla split her time working with Educators at the AGFC Crowley’s Ridge Nature Center and Fisheries Biologists in Northeast Arkansas. To encompass both the education and fish management aspects of her internship, she created an educational program that described the overcrowded, or stunted, crappie populations in local lakes. Her program highlighted the fact that daily creel limits have been removed from Lake Charles and Lake Frierson in order to thin the crappie populations. Reducing the number of crappie in each lake will help to increase the growth of crappie. As Skyla emphasized in her program, anglers are apex predators and can do their part to help the overcrowded crappie populations by liberally harvesting crappie from Lakes Charles and Frierson. Skyla also created kits with all the materials needed to teach the program and gave a kit to both Lake Charles State Park and Lake Frierson State Park.
