Well, Dave -- the answer is easy: it all depends.
I should stop there.
Seriously, it does depend. Some of the smaller lakes (the 400 acre ones are smaller) can be gone as a fishery in just a few dry years. However, I always hate to generalize, as I call this the "land of extremes." Lake Thompson is one of the bigger lakes to the west of me. It's probably about 13-14,000 acres right now, and probably 22 feet maximum depth. In the early 1980's, my now-retired boss shot a white-tailed deer in cattails of what is now 22 feet depth. In the mid-90s, I had a student working over there, and the max depth got down to about 16 feet. We figured we were heading toward the end of the fish community. However, we hit another wet cycle and it filled right back to 22 feet. So, for outdoorsmanhc and his dad, the lake could stay filled for decades, or we could hit a dry spell next year, and they might only have a few years of fishable waters. He told me that they do a lot of hunting, so during the dry times, they'll be glad to have a shallow marsh for ducks with cattails around the edge for pheasant habitat. The land of extremes.
