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Please join us for our first meeting of 2021 on January 4th at 7:00 PM

Our speaker will be Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation (FWC) Commission Biologist Reid Hyle.

This program will include a new benchmark coastwide shad stock assessment and updated state management plan for shad.

Details to join the Zoom meeting will be sent out soon.

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Reid Hyle

Reid is a life-long fisherman turned biologist. He grew up in southern Virginia mucking around catching perch, croakers, and puppy drum from the salt marshes behind his house and trying to catch Cobia and Stripers in the lower Chesapeake Bay. College took him to the mountains where he received a Bachelors degree in Fisheries Science from Virginia Tech and spent four years learning how to catch Smallmouth Bass in the New River. While there he also worked two summers as a biotech in Shenandoah National Park where he learned how to sneak up on wild brookies and fool them with dry flies in super clear low flow summer conditions. Salt water called him back to the coast for graduate school and he received a Masters Degree in Marine Science from the Virginia Institute of Marine Science. He couldn’t decide though if he wanted to be in fresh water or salt so he split the difference and did a thesis on the reproductive biology of American Shad in Virginia. He has since spent 17 years working for FWC Fish and Wildlife Research Institute as a biologist on the St. Johns River, nine years on the middle St. Johns and the last eight years in the Upper St. Johns River. The Upper St. Johns River project monitors the fish populations of the upper St. Johns River and its lakes and impoundments like Stickmarsh and the new Fellsmere Reservoir. They also have a project using radio telemetry to track Largemouth Bass over along the restored sections of the Kissimmee River as part of a project to evaluate the response of fish to the restoration work. And for all 17 years in Florida Reid has worked to build a monitoring program for American Shad in the St. Johns River as part of the multistate fishery management plan administered by the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission.

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