I live very close to Bass Pro in Springfield Missouri. I drive by it every day. I’ve always pretty much taken it for granted, and pop in a couple times a year to see what has changed.
The thing is, I don’t really buy anything there(maybe a small camping item on rare occasion). I never have. I’ve gone to see the aquariums mainly. They have several massive tanks for local aquatic life. Anyone who is into aquariums will appreciate these, as would anyone into big cool fish.
You can see bass, gar, sturgeon, trout, catfish, perch, carp, and even a big ass alligator snapping turtle.
Here’s a gallery of pictures of their tanks taken today, March 06, 2013
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- Hard to judge scale here, but that statue in the background is easily 20 feet tall.
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- turtle pond!
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- stream through the camping equipment area. It is stocked lightly.
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- the big waterfall to the lower pond. This pond has gar and sometimes ducks.
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- The viewing area of the big waterfall tank. This is where they have a diver go in and feed the fish while they give a presentation.
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- another panel from the big waterfall tank
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- one panel from the big waterfall tank
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- lower pond, you can see some gar
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- another trout tank
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- top view of trout tank
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- looking down into the big waterfall tank. Hard to judge dept here, but I think it is 10-15 feet deep
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- the big waterfall
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- massive gar tank at the front of the building. each panel is roughly 36 inches(I didn’t measure)
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- big ass gar and big ass alligator snapping turtle at the bottom
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- trout
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- trout
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- alligator snapping turtle booty
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- small waterfall and dock
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- pretty wide
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- huge … HUGE
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- gar
It is pretty fun to watch the diver go in and feed the fish by hand. They’re obviously used to the process.
I would really love to see them set up some more natural environments, just because that’s what I’m into. It would be awesome to see a river biotope with full sized channel catfish. Most of the tanks here are sculpted to look nice, but there isn’t much plant life (if any). I see that often in “monster tanks” though, so maybe it is a big fish thing.
The turtle pond looks amazing. It just looks so natural being there at the shop. The mind behind the landscape was brilliant.