First they got to Lake Powell, now they're in our inland lakes. How exciting, can't believe I didn't see this last month. Big forage fish for our LMB. Any biologists hazard a guess on what will happen to fish populations in an old lake that gets Gizzard?
http://www.azgfd.net/fish/fishing-news/b...elt/2008/12/03/Biologists discover gizzard shad population explosion at Roosevelt
December 3rd, 2008
PHOENIX � Arizona Game and Fish Department biologists conducting an autumn fish survey at Roosevelt Lake discovered that a relatively new invader, the American gizzard shad, has experienced a population explosion here at Arizona�s largest inland lake.
�This species looks like threadfin shad on steroids,� said Fisheries Chief Kirk Young. �These wide-bodied invaders from the eastern United States are shaped like footballs and can readily grow past the size where they are available to most sport-fish as forage.�
Young added that it is a wait-and-see proposition to determine if these invasive shad will have positive or negative impacts on Roosevelt or possibly the other popular fisheries along the Salt River.
During the recent fish survey at Roosevelt Lake, most gizzard shad sampled were in the 9- to 14-inch range and the largest two shad measured 17.7 inches long and weighed 2.3 pounds.
�We are still entering all the survey data, but based on what we saw during the sampling process, it appeared that gizzard shad were almost as numerous as the largemouth bass,� said Natalie Robb, the Mesa regional fisheries program manager.
At Roosevelt Lake, gizzard shad were first discovered during water quality sampling during January of 2007. Department biologists at the time recognized that gizzard shad are capable of rapid reproduction � a single female can produce up to 400,000 eggs. But the biologists were not expecting these newcomers to experience such a rapid population expansion.
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