
Troy Farmer’s fisheries management and conservation students are giving a whole new meaning to “catch and release.”
During the Fall 2024 semester, Farmer, a Clemson University associate professor of fisheries ecology, and his graduate assistant Jacob Daley, took a group of students from their class to John D. Long Lake in Union County, South Carolina, where they joined fisheries biologists from the Clemson office of the South Carolina Department of Natural Resources to remove more than 200 largemouth bass. The fish were then transferred to campus where the remainder of the class measured, tagged and catalogued each one before releasing them into Clemson’s athletics pond, which is in dire need of predator fish to combat the over-populated bluegill prey fish.

“Not only do the students get to learn the theory of fisheries management, but they get to get their hands dirty and experience management firsthand and see what it’s like,” Farmer said.
Farmer’s classes have been working with Clemson’s athletic department to manage their pond for several years. A class study showed that the pond was overcrowded with bluegills and there were very few predator fish, such as largemouth bass, to keep the number of prey fish down. The recommendation was to add more bass.
Farmer’s classes stocked bass twice previously, once with about 150 and then around 120, he said. This time, more than 200 bass were added to the pond.
“It takes a lot of predators in the pond to bring the pond back to balance,” Farmer said. “We anticipated a multiyear effort, so we’ll continue that effort and every year assess to see where we stand.”
At Long Lake, two students joined Farmer and Daley on the University’s boat, while two others teamed with William Wood, a fisheries biologist for DNR, on his boat. The specially equipped boats scoured the lake electrofishing primarily for largemouth bass. The fish were temporarily stunned, causing them to rise to the lake’s surface where the students netted them and placed them into a tank.
After one pass around the lake, the students unloaded their hauls on a DNR transport truck, switched boats and made another pass around the lake.

“It was my first time going out with DNR,” said senior Garrett Van Camp, an agriculture major from Rock Hill, South Carolina. “It was a cool experience to see how they manage lakes around the state. It was nice to see the different structures along the lake and where the fish were held up and what DNR does to manage the overcrowding of their lakes. We’ve done other experiments like this in class, but it was cool going out in the field with DNR and seeing firsthand how they do things.”
DNR transported the fish to Clemson where the rest of Farmer’s class measured and catalogued them before inserting passive integrated transponder tags to identify them and let them know which ones are surviving.
Mahnoor Qazi, a sophomore architecture major from Greenville, South Carolina, found the outdoor lab work interesting, even if it wasn’t what she originally meant to sign up for.
“I thought this class was for my sustainability minor,” she said. “I didn’t find out it wasn’t until I was registering for winter semester and my counselor asked why I was taking this class. I’m so happy I took it because it’s so interesting. It’s cool being outside and learning instead of being behind a board and learning the information. We get the actual experience here. And now it’s going to count for my minor.”
First and foremost, the class allowed the students to see how fisheries management works in the real world.

“My goal out of the project is that the students get a hands-on learning opportunity to really be the fisheries manager for the pond,” Farmer said. “The athletics department has been great to work with. They allowed us to come in and sample the pond. DNR has been a great cooperator. They provide resources to assist us and help us in training our students. It’s great also that the students get to meet some of the biologists and have some back-and-forth and see what a DNR fish biologists’ life is like.
“But my goal is that the students get to collect the data, analyze the data, make some recommendations and at the end of the semester we get to implement those recommendations. They get to see the whole process, from data collection and analysis, to making a recommendation, to achieving management objective, which is hopefully balancing the pond so there’s good fishing for both largemouth bass and bluegill.”
Not only is the project beneficial to the students, but is it helping Daley, who is studying for his doctorate in wildlife and fisheries biology.
“This gives me a lot of practice,” Daley said. “Dr. Farmer takes the lead, but I get to see how to interact with students, what works with students, how I should act in a professional environment in the classroom. I get to see how my communication methods work and what doesn’t work.”
Finally, DNR gets to assistance in managing Long Lake, which is overpopulated with bass, share their knowledge with students and get an early peek at what could be some of their future employees.
“This helps us by removing some of the bass so we can allow the bass that are still there a more abundant food source because it’s not trying to feed so many mouths,” Wood said. “That way, hopefully we can continue to improve the fishing in that lake.
“It’s awesome for us to have the University right here. It gives us an opportunity to pass on some of the knowledge we get as resource managers to the students. It gives them an opportunity to see a little bit of what we get to do in our jobs. I hope it helps them to decide is this what’s good for me or do I need to look at something else. Generally, whenever students do come out and help us, they all are motivated to learn, which is a wonderful thing for us to see. That’s what we want in our future staff members.”
Farmer said they may do a spring assessment to see if another restocking is needed at that time.

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