Ours is a 20 acre lake in Ellis,Cty. Tx that we share with 4 other families. Needless to say we can only completely control what we and our guest keep and release but encourage the other neighbors to "catch and release" LMB. The lake has also had a good crappie population with some 4 lb crappie being caught every so often. About 9 years ago I had Bob Lusk come down and do a lake survey. He recommended stocking threadfin shad and taking out a lot of the small bass. It has really worked well but now I am seeing the Crappie looking, for the most part, "poor". Not many caught over 8 to 10". I also am not seeing the shad in the numbers we once did. I was thinking that we probably needed to "re-shad". Between the comorants and preditors keeping their stomachs full is it possible that our shad population has dwindled this much? I look forward to your knowledgeable replies.....thanks

Don,

Never underestimate the impact cormorants can have on your forage fish. Think about it...1.5 pounds of fish per day per bird. Do the math and you will be shocked. That comes out to 180 pounds of forage fish per bird per typical winter season ( not to mention the associated excrement). A ten bird average is probably conservative for a 20 acre lake and that would mean 1800 pounds of forage...a ton of forage conservatively estimated. How many threadfin shad in a pound?

I would first get the cormorants under control and then see what happens to the shad population...you may be surprised to see it take off. I certainly would not feed more shad to the birds.

thanks for the reply. The comorants leave about March 1st every year. We might have a single come in from time to time but in late Dec. and Jan. sometimes 50 to 100 can light. I have scared them off when I could with my 20 guage but they come back within an hour or so generally. I will look forward to see how many shad schools we start seeing in the evening now that they have gone.