Smaller LMB 8"-13" tend to be rather slender bodied and can serve as prime forage for larger predators that are able to eat them. If one or three of your muskie survived, IMO they are cropping the bass when the bass get to a optimum forage size for the length of the muskie. Do you ever see them or catch them???. What are their sizes (lengths)? If the 24" muskie survived, it could be 40+" long by now after 9 yrs. The fingerlings could be 36+" all able to eat a 12"-13" bass maybe 14" bass. Anyone know the gape size of a 40" muskie???
3 muskie eating 150 bass or similar body depth fish per year will decimate the bass recruitment of those LMB trying to reach the 14" stage. Muskie could also be cropping the 7"-8" BG. Add to that the CC eating a few smaller bass of 5"-8" your bass recruitment could be severely impacted as you suspect. Also consider that bass eat bass not just BG. Try target harvesting a majority of the CC and one or two of the muskie and see how the fishery responds after a couple years. If you catch one of those muskie measure its mouth gape. Compare it to the body depth of several bass. You can always restock a muskie.
You should be using various angling methods and recording what fish and sizes of fish that are caught by each method so you can see the data trends of the year classes of all your fish. This will provide the best information how the fishery is changing based on your catch and harvest records. It took 9 years to get where your fish community is now. It will not completely turn around in 2-3yrs. You are learning.
Last edited by Bill Cody; 03/14/15 07:37 PM.
