Okay you experts (Bob and others)give me your take on this situation. Bob saw our lake in early spring so I'm really looking for his input, but I welcome others!!

We drained 1/2 of our 55 acre lake this summer (May) in hopes of getting it dug out deeper. This lake is seperated by a long road dam and is connected by an 8' culvert. Almost equal in size on both sides. We drained one side down completely and somehow managed to not loose many fish in the process. We dammed up the culvert so the one side could fill completely back up and support the fish. The lake was stocked about 4 years ago.

The situation now is that we got flooded with rains from the tropical storms and the drained side filled up completely again. We saw this coming so we broke the mini dam at the culvert (to keep from flooding problems) and made a wood framed screen that was placed at the entrance to the culvert to keep the fish from coming back over to the formerly drained side. We now have 55 acres worth of fish in 27 acres of water. We are doing this so we can have an easier time of draining this side of the lake next summer for renovation.

My question (finally you say) is what affect will this have on our fish population, health, and size to leave them like this for approx. 1 year?? Do we need to add more forage fish? It seems the fish are doing better than I expected since I saw a bass caught and weighed in at 7.5 pounds over the weekend. We are presently not taking any fish out. Should we remove some fish to protect against a stunted over crowded condition, or will this correct it self once we open the whole lake back up?

This is a strange situation that unfortunately was caused by poor lake construction. Sorry for the length of this message. What's your advice?