Was a matter of time..

The shells are like glass shards. Belton lake.


The waves will build up a mound.


It's not something to go stepping in barefoot. Hear tell, the small mouth tear them up. Because nature balances out somehow.



Little glass shards of busted up shells.



Ain't these leftover shells calcium?

Yep....not a surprise at all unfortunately.

The state would have to kill all migrating birds to keep them out, knew it would be a matter of time

Good thing they have the checkpoint at Diablo <sarcasm off>

I wouldn't call Amistad, "All the way to our southernmost Border"..

But I get the drift..

There is nothing that man can do to stop the spread to other water bodies.. You might slow it down a couple of minutes..

Mother Nature will take care of herself..

Guess that dog is going to need a new lake to work at..................

Seems like they don’t do well with falling water so it should be fine.

They'll boom and be everywhere, clear the water up some, then slowly decline... When I was in the power plant business I use to travel up and down the Ohio River. After the initial invasion the plants would have "Zebra Mussel Day", they'd shut down their water intakes for a day so divers could go down and clean out the intake pipes. That happened for about 5 years and then it sort of faded away. Towards the end of my career you hardly ever heard of that happening anymore. I've seen it happen in lakes and rivers from Mishitgan to Tennessee... Talked to a Tennessee Wildlife Resources officer last week, he says the only species that eats them and gains any nutritional value are Shell Crackers and Drums. Other species may eat them but they don't get anything from them since they can't get to the organism inside the shell... They've obviously helped the Great Lakes but the inland lakes are all about the same as before, during and after the initial invasion... Worst part is when the do the winter drawdowns and it exposes all the Zebra Mussels on the bank and they die and rot... If the wind is right it'll knock you over... Dan

I'm disappointed no one has produced a catfish bait from them.


I've fished with native mussels and it was one of the better baits. Especially after letting sit a day to start stinking. Fighting the urge to not throw up. Trot line hooks.


So isn't there a way to process the meat out of the Zebra mussels?

The shells on Zebra mussels are different......much more robust than native mussels......and they are tiny.......likely very costly to process them into bait.....then there would be the concern of spreading them with the dormant eggs somewhere in the processed bait surviving the bait making protocol.

The catfish at Ivie gorged on them when they first exploded. You could see big black pods of the zebra mussels. Now I don't see many at all there or LBJ. I realize they are still there, but not even noticeable. Sounds like Amistad will continue to do boat checks to keep the Federal funding....

No doubt the drum population has exploded in the lakes where the zebra muscle populations were high. I've caught more drum in the last 5 years than I have caught in all the other years of my life combined. On almost every one you can feel their bellies full of shells. As far as the regulation goes, it's the typical government MO. Continue to push regulations that have not worked on an issue that has already spread to every major lake in the State. I think the bulk of the movement of these muscles was by natural runoff, drinking water transfer between lakes, and bird movement anyway. Simply nothing you can do about it.

Can't stop mother nature.
Wonder if they will quit requiring all tournament boats to be inspected before a derby?
Since it's infected guess they will inspect you after loading.