What a difference a year makes! Electro-survey last year took 65 minutes to produce 35 to 40 LMB. Electro-survey today took 37 minutes to produce 120 LMB up to near 5#, 4 HSB up to 7#, plus some monster BG up to 1.5#. (Largest BG I've ever caught was 14 ounces, btw.)The survey guy said he could tell the big momma bass were deep, beyond where the current worked, but it was prime time to harvest the males who have finished bed guarding duties & were in shallow feeding.
Honestly surprised at LMB numbers, as bushy pondweed was killed in June last year and I'd have thought the yoy LMB would get eaten quickly without much cover. Apparently there was a huge spawn and 206 LMB harvested in 2020 should have been more.
HSB and BG doing very well, and even the few female LMB were in good shape. But we have too many LMB and I'll need to step up harvest. So far 154 taken out this year, two-thirds by electro, with 300 goal.
Big BG are to be expected in lakes with lots of LMB, but fortunately we also have lots of smaller BG. Feeding makes a difference! Also, forage pond is now full of small CNBG spawned last fall, I plan to put them in main BOW in a few weeks. Trying to fatten them up a bit first, I wanted to wait until after electro harvest.
Ten (!) more trees need to be felled into the pond to make for adequate cover. Some variable leaf pondweed growing now, not a whole lot of anything else. Fishery biologist very kindly added 25 lb pond fertilizer to the initial 50 lb I put in earlier to help the plankton bloom.
They didn't shock up any trout, so I'm guessing RBT are either dead or deep. Tilapia stocked to head off algae issues. A few F1 LMB were identified by their color & girth and released regardless of length.
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