Still no report. I was supposed to get it last week. I am starting to wish I would have just used Greg Grimes. We also did not get any length or weight data on the forage fish. I wish we would have. I was the one that drove getting all the lengths and weights of the bass. But then again we only had a little over 200 bass to weigh and measure vs thousands of forage fish. I don�t think we would have got the bass data if I did not say I wanted it and had the scales to do it.
At the beginning we were netting ever fish that came up. This is when we should have got the forage fish data. We had a lot of fish and after filling up the tanks we stopped netting the forage fish and only netted bass. So this first group would not have been a representation of the entire lake but it would have been a size distribution that I think would have represented the lake.
Of course I am an engineer and the more data you have the better. The surveyor did inspect all the fish that we netted and looked for health, parasites, age, etc, but no hard numbers on the forage fish. There was definitely a gap in the 3-5" range with most of the readears being bigger. But there were a lot of them. He verbally recommended that a feeding program was not needed due to the numbers of forage fish. He mentioned something about stocking some coppernose. We did not shock any up.
This is a little off subject but we also had fish that looked like a cross between a readear and a crappie. We only shocked up a few crappie but I know we have a lot more. They were just not up in the shallow water when the survey was performed. We have caught quite a few crappie in the past. We did shock up one that was 2 lbs.
Overall the experience was a good one. We all enjoyed riding the boat and netting the fish. The Surveyor was very nice and did not try to push and lot of products on us; so far, I have not received his report.
If I thought I could make money at it I would love to do these surveys. I find that the answers are always in the numbers. If you collect enough data and the correct data the answer will always show it�s self.
Take for example the bass shock distribution data and my fishing data. I now feel confident that we can represent the bass population with fishing data. I and bet we can do the same for the forage fish. I am thinking about have a yearly fishing day for all the friends and family to come out with the kids and catch forage fish. I bet if you have them catch a few hundred fish you would get your size distribution graphs.
In closing, I am glad I spent the $1000 for the survey. Probable should have used Greg Grimes for a little more money or should have requested more data on the forage fish. All in all it was a good experience.
Last edited by OK 12 Acre Lake; 06/10/08 04:52 PM.
