For me, managing a high diversity lake is extremely simple and easy.
Most of the people fishing our lake are kids, handicapped or elderly in groups under the supervision of parents or professional staff. Most of them have very little, if any, fishing experience. If they have fishing equipment, it is usually heavy enough to catch a whale. Therefore, I furnish all rods, reels, tackle and bait. We use inexpensive spin casting reels with a single circle hook, split shot and bobber. Most of the fishing is from a covered bridge especially made for use by people in wheelchairs. My management goal then is to provide a quality fishing experience for these people.
This is what I think they want for their experience. First, they want to catch a lot of fish. Second, they want these fish to be good size so they can tell their friends and family about them. We try to make sure that everyone has a picture of themselves with a big fish. Lastly, they love counting how many different species they caught.
We have very high fishing pressure on this small lake. If we allowed fish to be taken from this lake, we could fish it out very quickly. So, the first thing we did was to make this lake totally catch and release. We catch many of these fish 25-100 times a season. The most important thing we did to reduce catch and release mortality was the use of circle hooks. They are amazing, especially with pan fish.
Next, I manage this just like everyone else does to produce large panfish. The only thing different is that I have so many forage fish to control. I do that with lots of different species of predators and over stocking predators. Most of our panfish are large so they help control the fry and fingerlings.
Lastly, I don’t expect any of the predators to reproduce in my lake. It is great if they do, but I don’t count on it. I treat them all as if they were wipers that I have to constantly replace. It’s no harder or expensive to constantly stock LMB or catfish than it is with wipers. SMB are more expensive so you have to decide how much they mean to you. They mean a lot to me.
There are a huge number of advantages to constantly stocking the predators. I don’t have to worry about the crappie fry eating the LMB fry. I don’t have to worry if I get a good year class of something. If I decide that I want more of something, I just buy it. If I get too many forage fish, I just buy more predators. Most of these predators are the size appropriate to managing for large panfish. However, I’ve purchased a couple of “WOW” fish of each species.
Does it seem like it would be a lot of money to purchase these fish? I don’t smoke, drink, gamble or run around. This is my hobby. Compared to the amount of money most of us have spent on our lakes, this amount of money for fish each year is insignificant.
Bits and parts of this type of management can be used in many situations. Hopefully, this might provide more ideas about ways to manage our lakes.
