Thanks again Jpsdad for your detailed response.
Yes, the lake was drained to nothing but a creek when the dam broke in 2005. It stayed that way for about 4 months during reconstruction. There was no restocking nor any other management efforts after this.
This same situation also occurred two other times in prior years, 10-20 years apart from one another. Same results each time, no management, but the fishing got better and better as each year passed with exploding populations of huge bream, crappie, bass, shad and shiners.
One observation perhaps worth noting is the north side of the lake is bordered by a 300 acre field that runs the span of the entire lake. This field was used for row crops for 40 years until about 5-6 years ago when the land was purchased and planted with pecans. No clue if this would have had any impact from fertilizer/runoff?
I would imagine that the water quality has not changed from years past, but there is no way to know this.
Another note, the biologist is coming to shock/remove as many small bass as possible starting January. He says 4-5 trips at 5-6 hours each should get it done.
I am very interested in the organic fertilization you described, but I know nothing about this so I’m all ears. Is this typically more or less cost effective?
As far as the neighbors contributions, they have already committed over the past year to keeping any small fish, however not many of them fish regularly. Only a few other folks ever come out to fish regularly besides us land owners. We’ve loosely tallied what’s been taken out and we estimate that somewhere around 600 small bass over the past year total.
I do also agree with your humble opinion about the capability of the lakes water quality to produce healthy populations as we’ve seen it for decades. My fear too with fertilizing is that this would almost over stimulate things, if it’s even doable, given the flow through rate. I also wish the siphon was an option but we’ll just have to keep working on the majority owner to change his mind. He’s 92 years old and very set in his ways.
We are willing to have the biologist come out yearly and shock to cull if need be, which will most likely be necessary.
Per your closing thoughts I shouldn’t have made it sound like the others wouldn’t be willing to chip in monetarily, as they will be and already have been. We’ve put together a budget of about $30k for the fist year and probably around $15k per year thereafter.
Keep the thoughts coming. Thanks!
