CEDAR FALLS - Last year Tony Brady couldn't celebrate much after a mostly fruitless search for fingernail-sized mussels at George Wyth State Park.

On Wednesday, Brady did a little dance on the boat dock after the follow up investigation.

The second year of a mussel reintroduction program marked a more than 400 percent increase in the number of mussels that lived through the summer.

Mussels are seen as an indicator of the health of waterways. Hartman Reserve Nature Center and the Department of Natural Resources have been cooperating on reintroductions of mussels, in part, as a way to measure the health of area lakes and the Cedar River.

Brady, a mussel propagation specialist with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, was joined by a member of the Cedar Valley Walleye Club in hoisting a metal cage on to the dock to see if mussel larvae planted last spring resulted in mussels.

As walleye club members, Iowa Department of Natural Resources staffer and a Hartman Reserve naturalist started washing mud off the traps, they found dozens upon dozens of plain pocketbook mushrooms.

Brady let loose his brief dock-top dance.

"I wasn't dancing last year," Brady said. "I'm happy now."

For the second year of the mussel reintroduction program at George Wyth State Park, mussel larvae, called glochidia, were injected into the gills of largemouth bass. The bass are then placed in cages and put into George Wyth Lake. After the mussels grow through a cocoon phase, they drop off into the water.

Last year only four of the plain pocketbook mussels they planted survived. This year the crew counted 430.

Brady said all he could do was guess at why the mussels did so much better this year. It's possibly because they were left in deeper water than last year, Brady noted the water was much clearer last year than this year, so maybe more food was available this time.

Another possibility could be how the mussels were introduced. Last year the host largemouth bass swam in buckets infused with the glochidia, this year Brady hand injected the gills with glochidia.

While the numbers were disappointing last year, at the time Lyndsey Anderson, mussel project coordinator at Hartman Reserve Nature Center, was encouraged that at least a few lived.

This year was a different story, and Brady termed it a success.

"Next year we may try some black sandshell since these are doing so well," Brady said.

The black sandshell mussels are less hardy than the plain pocketbook, and would be introduced on the gills of walleyes.

While the George Wyth Lake mussels did well, a second set of mussels released in Alice Wyth Lake didn't fare so well, with results similar to last year at George Wyth Lake.

"Overall we are pleased with what we had here," Anderson said.

The mussels harvested from George Wyth Lake were transplanted to the Cedar River at the Rotary Reserve north of Cedar Falls. A reintroduction program involving adult mussels was started there last year.

Contact Jon Ericson at (319) 291-1461 or jonathan.ericson@wcfcourier.com.