I hope you all had a wonderful holiday season. Our whole family was able to get together and we loved it.
We don’t charge anything to have people fish here. I’m retired and this is our way of giving back to our community. We try to give a very good fishing experience to people that normally wouldn’t get it otherwise.
Bill, I really appreciate your detailed thoughts on this subject. Now I would like to get everyone’s ideas on how to manage the situation I have. Imagine that you are hired by a local nonprofit organization to manage their 4-acre lake. They want to provide a quality fishing experience for kids, people with disabilities and the elderly. They especially want to “turn kids on to fishing”. In their minds, this is what they want to have happen. They want everyone should catch lots of fish and they want this fish to be big enough that the kids get excited about them. And then they would like everyone to catch a good selection of the local fish species so that the kids can learn what they are. They have given you a big enough budget to buy fishing equipment, bait and some replacement fish. They certainly aren’t giving you enough money to stock the lake every week. Lastly, they have put a lot of money into making this lake and they want to see it used and used a lot.
I don’t have a board of directors telling we what to do (my wife excepted) but this is about the situation we have accepted. This is how I’ve tried to manage this situation. How would you manage this situation differently?
The first thing I did was to think of this management as the simplest terms possible. That is a bass, bluegill and catfish lake with a small wiper component. Since it is easier to catch bluegills than bass or catfish, I decided to manage for large bluegills. That also allows the size of all of the fish species to better fit the fishing equipment I bought. There was also had one other problem. Between natural and catch and release morality, I couldn’t afford to loose many more fish from the lake. Once I got a fish to a size everyone liked to catch, I had to do everything possible to protect that fish so that we could catch it again and again. This formed my basic management plan and the one that I continue to follow.
Then I did one thing different. I started managing groups of species as if they were just one species. That gave me a forage group, a bass group, a catfish group and a small wiper group. To this (because of our northern conditions), I added a walleye/yellow perch group.
The forage group consists of bluegills, hybrid bluegills, black and white crappie, rock bass, pumpkinseeds and green sunfish (which I wish I hadn’t added). All of these species work together as a forage panfish group. So far, I’m not doing anything different than anyone else does when they have a bluegill/redear sunfish combination. I’m just doing it with more species. Again, this is nothing different than a natural southern lake with bluegill, redear sunfish, warmouth, black crappie, white crappie, green sunfish and redbreast sunfish.
The bass group consists of LMB and SMB. The catfish group has channel catfish, freshwater drum and shorthead redhorse in it. The wiper group has wipers (23 individuals), white bass (about 50) and goldeye (17 individuals). I manage each of these groups exactly the same as many of you do with single species. The total numbers and size structure of each of these groups is about the same (hopefully) as is appropriate for raising large panfish.
So far, what I’ve done is nothing different than anyone does managing a LMB, bluegill, channel catfish and wiper lake. We can make this difficult and complicated but I try to make it all simple.
The walleye/yellow perch group is the least successful group in our lake. Because of their size and shape, everything eats yellow perch. However, the only good prey in this lake for the walleye are the perch. What this means is that we don’t have many perch in our lake and the walleye grow very slowly.
Over time, I’m sure one or another of these species will tend to dominate each group. However, with only 4 acres, I can seine, trap or remove by other means any species I wish and achieve any balance I want. The only group that I can imagine my needing to manage intensively is the forage group. The people fishing this lake enjoy catching all of the forage species. Unless some species gets wildly out of control, I don’t think I’ll have to do too much management with this group.
A small lake like this is not conducive to reproduction by walleye, wipers, white bass, goldeye, catfish, drum or redhorse. So automatically, I’m committed to continually stocking these species. That leaves the LMB and SMB. They might reproduce naturally but I’m committed to not letting the predator/prey relationship get out of balance. Stocking fingerlings of these species, in general, is a waste of time. They end up just being expensive forage. That’s why I stock subadults.
I don’t think that the number of species has much effect on the growth rate of most fish in this lake. What makes a very big difference is that I overstock predators on purpose. This is consistent with growing large panfish. This means that the predators are hungrier than they probably would be otherwise. I view this as a positive. It also means that the predators grow slower than they probably would otherwise. This is also fine with me. Some of the biologists reading this can comment about longevity in slower growing fish.
I don’t think that the comparison to a zoo is accurate. I would compare this to an aquarium where all of the predators are of similar size and temperament. The difference is that we are raising the food for these fish right in our lake.
Is this “natural”? Of course not! But if you look at all of our lakes critically, there is very little “natural” about them. Most of the lakes themselves are man made. Many of the fish species we use are not native to the areas we are putting them. Florida strain LMB did not naturally occur in Texas or California. And the fact that we actually manage our lakes is not “natural”.
Do the people that fish our lake really care that the fish they are catching were stocked and didn’t grow up in the lake naturally? No. Do many of the fishermen around the country care if the fish they catch were stocked or not? Do fishermen care that the salmon in the Great Lakes aren’t native? In most cases, these issues are irrelevant.
The more I think about it and watch our lake, the bigger fan I am of nonbreeding populations of predators in small ponds. It costs a bit more but managing the predator/prey relationship is so much easier this way. Also, if we make a mistake or change our minds, it is much easier to change with nonbreeding populations.
In general, most species are in good condition. Next to the walleye/yellow perch group, the open water feeders of the wiper group seem not thrive as well as other species. There really isn’t much open water forage. The goldeyes are the thinnest followed by the white bass. The wipers can always find something to eat and are thriving. I’m going to let the white bass die out since most people can’t tell them from wipers and just go with wipers. I want to keep about 20 or so goldeyes in the lake just for something different.
All of the species of the bass and catfish groups seem to be doing well. Of the forage species, both species of crappie tend to be thin. I like crappies and will see what I can do to improve their health.
This is an extreme situation and it forced me to think about things differently. In so doing, I’ve had to develop ways of managing this lake that may have applicability in other situations.
I’m very much looking forward to have Dave Willis bring his class to study our lake. And yes, Dave, I do hope you can spread the information you gain from this lake as widely as possible.
