Rick Echols
Lakes & Fisheries Superintendent
Rick Echols joined the POA in January 2016 and is originally from the Shenandoah Valley in Virginia. He has a Bachelor’s in Biology from Bridgewater College, Virginia and a Master’s in Zoology from Southern Illinois University, Carbondale. He has 21 years’ experience in fisheries management and aquaculture including the Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries where he worked as a trout stocker, creel clerk, and fisheries technician. He worked for the U.S. Fish & Wildlife service as a big river fisheries biologist on the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers and as a fish biologist at the Uvalde National Fish Hatchery in Texas. He also worked for the Kentucky Department of Fish & Wildlife Resources as an assistant district fisheries biologist and ran his own consulting business.