Yes esshup, it is time to re-evaluate my populations. Clearly I have very few YP left from activity at feeding time and from what we catch when we go fishing.
Last weekend the kids caught a very large and very old female YP and there are not many like that left. It was actually encouraging to see the smaller YP in the above picture as I don't have a way to sample that size class. I don't see them as much at feeding time and we don't catch YP in that size class.
Fellow member Ron C will help me restock YP and maybe add some SMB but have to also re-evaluate the forage.
While kids were fishing they caught 3 huge GSH (fat and 6-7" long) They also are my original stockers but we have no small GSH anymore.
My SFS spawning this year was not as effective. Usually we have 3 times over the summer where there are clouds of minnows. I only spotted two possible crops of progeny and the last one was not that successful. I may have too many large GSH for even the SFS. I also still struggle to place structure that they use. They tend to find their own structure rather than use my stacks of CDs on a pole.
I'm concerned that there may not be enough minnow for both the stocker YP and SMB so I may have to add YP only of the larger size class and then work harder to remove the remaining large GSH and add more spawning structure next spring for SFS.
