Friday, Aug. 22, 2008

Cabela’s aquarium lures weekly crowds

By JOHN ENGLISH

Cabela’s attracts hundreds of visitors a week for a viewing that most people would have to go to a local zoo to watch.

The sports and outdoors store, at Texas 170 and Interstate 35W, maintains its own aquarium, complete with dozens of varieties of freshwater fish that people travel miles to see.

Every day but Wednesday, aquarium workers give talks about fish, and then feed them, as fascinated onlookers ask questions and take pictures.

"We don’t feed live worms to the big bass tank, but we feed it to the other two," aquarium assistant Winston May said.

"We feed all three tanks goldfish and shiners. We feed frozen shad to both tanks, but not the crappie tank. We feed dry food every day to each tank," May said.

The aquarium’s main attraction is an 85-pound catfish named "Stalker," a creature reminiscent of one of the underground monsters from the movie Tremors.

"Every day the public comes at 1 o’clock," May said on a recent Sunday. "Saturday’s usually our biggest crowd, but we’ve had even more today than yesterday."

All of the fish are freshwater varieties, and Texas Parks and Wildlife Department provided most of them, May said.

But Cabela’s also has had some personal donations, including a catfish native to South America.

"We have to turn a lot of them away, because we don’t need many fish now," he said.

"When people catch a lake record – like we have a lake record for Lake Lewisville, which was a 3-pound, 13-ounce black crappie – we have that. We have the lake record from Bridgeport on a channel cat, which I think was like 26 pounds, as well. If they catch a lake record, we put it out there. We post it and say that we do have it," he said.

The aquarium features black bass, channel catfish, flathead catfish, black crappie, white crappie, red fish, carp and other fish, plus hard-shell, soft-shell and snapping turtles.

Tim Huebner, a biologist who formally worked with the Fort Worth Zoo, is the aquarium director at Cabela’s.

On Sundays Huebner typically performs a dive show, where he dives into the tank while May talks to the spectators about the aquarium.

May said it does require a lot of work for he and Huebner to maintain the aquarium.

"We probably work a combined 80 hours a week, and we could probably work 120," May said.

"You’ve got to clean the glass on the inside and the outside, you have to check the pH, you’ve got to check the health of it. We get bait every Thursday, and we have to clean the bait tanks. We’ve got to clean the filters on everything,," he said.

May and Huebner’s efforts did not go unnoticed to Jim Smith of Elk City, Okla., who was impressed with the aquarium.

"We think it’s pretty cool," Smith said. "We were wandering through and saw this, and we will definitely come to see this again if we are in the area."

Brian Strickland of Celina said it was a good family outing for him.

"We always come and see this when we’re here," Strickland said.

May said that the family-friendliness of the aquarium is appealing for a lot of people and that many visitors return to see it time and time again.

"Once you see it, you’re like, 'Wow, that’s pretty amazing, let’s go do it again,’ " May said. "Especially on a hot day, the kids love to come in here."

John English is special contributor to The Keller Citizen.