4 years back I dropped a fish camera down while ice fishing...spun it around and counted about 1000 perch.
Fast forward to his past winter and tried it again. Counted 8 perch.
Now this weekend we tried to catch perch and couldn’t find a perch to save my bacon.
Went from catching hundreds a day to...I haven’t been able to catch a perch in two months! In twenty hours fishing shallow and deep.
Thinking about what variables have changed we have stopped netting perch. Still encouraging fishing for them.
Still using Reward for aquatic plant control and copper sulphate for algae control.
In 2016 I stock the lake with brook trout and brown trout.
Could them predaceous trout been that successful in controlling perch?
It is a real mystery at the moment.
I can only hope we have beaten them down.