theo, it's good to be back. Yes, it's the heavy predation that takes out all of the LMB young. I see lots of them reach the two inch range but then they disappear. I've only found one LMB and 3 SMB that reached 8 inches. Other than BG, three years ago, we had some GSF/pumpkinseed hybrids.
If someone wants to do something like this, it's fairly simple. It's no different than managing an aquarium which is what we're really doing anyhow. You need a source of food. That can be pellets, a panfish or just the young of the predators. Then you need to control the population just like you would do in an aquarium. I like non-breeding species because it is so easy to control their numbers.
In our lake, I like to have about 3 SMB to 1 LMB. With natural reproduction, the LMB would quickly dominate. Since we have such heavy predation, neither species reproduces. So I just stock 3 SMB for every LMB. We commonly do this sort of thing with HSB, trout and CC. I just expand this concept to other species.
Weissguy, just the way the world works, we will eventually get black bullheads. We have a hatchery permit. For whatever reason, I see that we have a permit for PALLID STURGEON, an endangered species. I don't think I want to try and see if they really mean it. I would like to have a paddlefish or two and hopefully will pull that off one of these days.
The yellow perch have probably been eliminated by predation and we only catch 1-2 GSF a year. I'll slowly let the CC die out so that we only have a dozen or so in the lake. We only have a few sauger and saugeye and as long as we have walleye, I don't care about them. If we had chain pickeral in this area, I would certainly try them.
