Update....mystery solved.
Where did all of these 15-20" pike come from all at once? Well...
So i went up to dad's place to talk with some of the people that have been on board with aiding the pond for quite some time. Brought some diagrams on how to build thier own structure, had a bunch of stats you guys have helped me put together, wanted to convince everybody to start keeping better records, start communicating more, get everybody on a google doc that they could post creel data and observations, you know, to start making more educated guesses than the ones everybody's been spewing out.
Well the question comes up that hey, how did all of thes 15" pike all appear in one year, and why ddi we catch none of them until ice-fishing? I get just about ready to start talking about their growth rates and spawning preferences, and how they are a more verocious hunter than some of the other fish in cold weather, and one of the homeowners speaks up and says.....
wait for it.....wait for it.....wait for it
It's because those city guys put all those pike in our lake last year.
WHAT!!!!?????
Turns out that they had one of the larger lakes in the chain of lakes stocked last november. They had a bunch of left over fish (how is that even possible!!!??? Fox lake is enormous, why didn't they just put the rest in there???) than they had originally planned on using. 'Round comes the city works employee with a giant tank, pulls up to the shared land (where the drain plug is), and dumps in (estimate from the homeowner might be WAY high) 75 15" pike.
So......i guess that answers the question.
looks like we're gonna go on a pike-hunting bonanza. Other homeowners are really peeved, the one who lives next to the shared land (the HOA owns one sliver of the land that no house is on...this is where the drain-gate for the pond is) never thought it would be a big deal....but now he sees how it is. A lot of them are talking lawsuit against the city works department.
LOL......so i guess the overpopulated bass problem will be solved in due time. The overpopulated pike are sure to chow down on them. Now we just need to get about 95% of those pike out of the lake.
So say we take a conservative estimate and guess that there are 35 2yo pike now swimming about in this lake. What do you guys think???
LMAO over here, after all of the brain wracking trying to figure out what was going on and what to do about it. Some dumbass public works guy is responsible.
