WOW. But are you certain you haven't had more mortality than just two a year? For example, do you think maybe you had some mortality that wasn't evidenced when the crayfish were crawling onto the ice? Just thinking. If the originals are 4 lbs or larger ... then if 50 were to remain that would be > 400 lbs/acre of just survivors of the original SMB. Add the recruitment, the YP, RES, SGE, and BG and there is some more standing weight on top of that. What are your thoughts regarding what your standing weight might be now?
I know I've had some morts that are never seen, possibly under the ice, angling morts, etc..
For the purpose of data I have only counted those visual morts as something I can document.
The factor I can't write on paper is how many fish went through emergency spillway late'19 and again in early may of '20. I suspect some went so my original numbers-fish that stayed put- are unknown and may explain why I'm not seeing as many clips from those 2 years. I have some, but not in big numbers.
I rebuilt the inlets upstream (run-off) into berms with a channel cut around pond. (eliminated my nutrient problem for sure)
Last Feb when my wife nailed the YP record, between the 2 of us, we caught 71 SMB from 6" to almost 17". "Most" fell in the 9-12" range, 20 of those fish 9 to 11" have been removed from May through August.
I have culled 101 fish to date-alive-but total with morts that I know of, I can't say 100%..
EDIT: to be clear, there are only 8 locations to clip a fish (Bass) safely without injury, so with that method in mind, 8 fish a year class is all that can be done.
