ewest, if you need more info or pictures of sand lake for your article I can try to help you.
jpsdad, I can tell you that the fishing for 6" plus panfish MAY have been better at some point in the last couple of years but the locals have not seen any change. For sure in the past 2-3 summers there seems to be zero decent BG or PS of any type. Hard to even catch a stunted one. Nephew and 2 buddies spent a couple hours fishing with worms and had only about 5-6 stunted ones to show for it.
I do not know that they run the aerators in the winter (I can find out but I that was not mentioned to me) Winter kill is a possibility.
The word on the lake is that they don't catch any catfish either so I'm thinking the original stockers are gone or are few and there was no natural reproduction.
The water is very very clear now and much less weeds in the shallows. To me the lack of weeds is surprising with the aeration. To me that means that the aggressive use of weed control chemicals also changed the refuge that the small fish use in the weeds.
Agree that in the last decade the lake probably continues to get shallower and that makes it a less favorable place for NP.
Per Mr. Cody, pickerel are better suited for warmer shallow lakes, I wonder why in the many small, eutrophic puddles around my house that they don't try to use CP for additional predator influence beyond the typical LMB?
I also wonder why the DNR wouldn't try to boost the forage base in many of these lakes using GSH or other shiners such as spotfins?
But the point of this thread is that catfish can really exert an immediate and measurable effect on certain slot size of panfish.
