I'm with Norm on this one. I have too many lakes under management where bass reproduction is the biggest hindrance to bass production.
If predator fish didn't reproduce, and forage fish did, we could manage for size and numbers of those predators.
That's one reason I like hybrid stripers....they don't spawn. What you get is what you get.
If largemouth bass, and smallmouths, could be totally managed as a fishery that didn't reproduce, we could re-stock them from time to time to maintain "proper" numbers of a given year class.
Our length/weight ratios, relative weights could easily predict the need to restock predators. Predators couldn't get ahead of the food chain, (which, by the way, is the most expensive part of managing a fishery), and game fish could grow at refreshing rates.
And, at $.85 for a largmouth bass fingerling, or $2 for a smallmouth, $20-40 per acre, every other year seems pretty cheap to me, to have a lake with manageable numbers of predators.
But, fish spawn, and we do the best we can to deal with it.
So goes nature.
Fun, huh?
