I am curious if LMB and SE prefer different habitat. Obviously it's just 1.6 acres, but wonder if the LMB will tend to the shore and brush while the SE stay in deeper water.
They are very different in where they spend their first year. If Saugeye are stocked correctly, best recruitment is seen when they are stocked literally in the middle most portion of the impoundment.
Saugeye spend most of the first year of their life feeding at night and only frequent cover under darkness until they are in the 11-14" range where they begin slipping in and out of cover and move back out fairly quickly.
Saugeye is not a species you want to get too carried away with stocking numbers and 10 per ac in a 5-6" size is all I could recommend. We see extremely high survival rates from these even with LMB present because they don't hide in shoreline cover where most LMB are hunting.
As they age, the do begin to frequent these areas more often from the 14-18" size and with abundant forage, we have some that have achieved 24" by the middle of year 3 but normally 19-22 would be most common at yr 3.
