My thought: BTW, I’m generally wrong.
I’ve never really thought that we, or at least I, could make much difference by fishing. Compare culling with the number of eggs laid, hatched and fish that escape predation. And, if I really work at it, the fish get hook shy. Natural predation is the most powerful tool at our disposal.
My first thought after reading this was..."What about trapping as a culling technique?". But, then I remembered the efforts that I have put into trapping crawdads from my 1/4 acre pond and have little to no evidence that I am making a difference. Surely I am, but if anything, a combination of fishing, trapping, & seining could make a difference in a small BOW, but I have to agree that natural predation is the key factor with my limited experience. It was obvious that my initial stocking selections and numbers were not going to yield a balanced BOW and I have since added CC to help with the high populations of the smaller critters.
