Quote:
Originally Posted by freeones
I see good news in your post, not doom. You're suggesting that things will remain pretty much as they are for the next 7 or more years, and that without the fishery collapsing, it will correct itself over time with no need for outside interference.
It's been shown that PCR can support young of the year and fingerlings to maturity in the past, that tells me it can do it again if the biomass base is available for their growth. Yes there are lots of predators, but EVERY lake has lots of predators.
Opening up PCR to harvest will simply speed up the process of removing the two main year classes, drastically if it isn't strictly controlled. It won't fundamentally change the rate at which the walleye population replenishes itself, it's still going to take the same amont of time. All that's been accomplished is to decrease the walleye population artificially and move the timetable for change ahead by a few years. I don't see the point in that.
I don't see adding a bunch of forage fish as an option either, Ronbill makes a good argument for that being a failure, and again, there's limited biological carrying capacity.
So what are the remaining options? Stocking again? At this stage, I think it would be pointless, it's already at max capacity. It might be a very viable option in the future to help supplement the walleye's natural recruitment rate if the quality of the fishery really suffers.
The only other option is exactly what Ronbill suggests, and that's trying to improve the quality of the water and boost the bottom links of the food chain. I don't know how you do that, but that's something that I could support.
It's all well and good to want to do something, but doing something just for the sake of doing it is not sound reasoning, nor is a personal preference for the type of fishing that exists in a certain lake.
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Dan, as humans we tend to always look from the top down (i.e. focussing on the sportfish). However, getting to the root of the problem (i.e. cyanobacteria dominace) means bottom-up in this case and is the only sustainable way of changing the fishery over the long-term.
It would be pointless to continue stocking sportfish in PCR and I suspect some limited harvest of fish could help - just don't tell my counterparts in SRD I said that
