The electro shock verified what I suspected, gave us some of the reasons for the skinny bass, and ideas to help the situation. It also gave us a professionals diagnosis that we needed to remove bass. This is really key with an HOA lake, as you have to get everyone on board, or at least as many as you can.
Here are a couple of things we found out, and did based on the survey.
1. Bass were feeding on to small of blugill. 18-24" bass were eating 2-4" bluegill. The relative weight of our small bass were pretty good, but our bigger bass were skinny. We added Xmas trees in bluegill spawning areas to help survival rates, and also added xmas trees in areas a little deeper to try to give the BG a chance to get to the 5-6+" size.
2. Added threadfins to try to take some pressure off of the BG so that they would not get eaten so quickly.
3. Realized we needed to remove 3000lbs of bass. That is alot of fish. During the shock we culled probably 300 lbs.
4. Gives me data to take to the HOA to justify adding feeders to try to beef up the bluegill. I'm not sure if this will work, but I'm gonna try.
We are seeing better RW this year, and I think the shad are doing what we wanted.
It cost us like $1500 for the survey. We've had it done twice, about 4 years apart. I think it was worth it. We did it in the spring, post spawn, so we got a good sampling of the bass.
With the size of our lakes it is not a quick turn around, but I think with persistance, you can make a difference. Hopefully I'm leading the lake in the right direction. The advice from the biologists, and this forum have been a huge help.
If you would like, send me a PM with your email, and I will send you a copy of the survey that they did.
