Quote:
Originally Posted by Don Andersen
David,
Have we sunk so low in fish management we need trophy fish just out of concrete tanks?
And I’ve caught a few of those Brooders in Manitoba. A sad experience. I’ve caught walleye with more jam.
Don
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Agreed. A perfect managed stocked trout lake has a good balance of trout to food. Natural growth rates means big rainbows. Improved with more trout species variety in the lake.
Worst is perch added. Trout don’t grow. Perch don’t grow.
In Lake Sundance I had the opportunity to try to create a quality trout fishery after the illegal introduction of perch.
For years we netted thousands of perch while seeing the population climb.
Dropping a camera down any ice fishing hole, one could count 1000 perch. Trout stocked would not grow and would lose weight. I could easily and consistently catch 50 perch an hour.
Something has happened recently. Last year we dropped the camera down and could count 8 perch. This past summer I and buddies fished hard for perch and many times got skunked.
So what changed?
I was in charge of trout stocking. I had brook trout and brown trout added to our license and in 2016 stocked 1000 browns 5-7 inch long and 1000 brooks from 7-11 inch long.
In Fall 2018 and 2019 we stocked 2000, 14-16 inch rainbows.
What I believe has happened is the brooks and brown predated heavily on young of the year perch. Rainbows likely got some as well. While the perch population lost significant numbers of new perch at the same time perch had been dying of old age. That could suggest the loss is a combination of age mortality and predation.
Angling pressure was present although not significant.
Three years ago the average size perch was 5-6 inches. Zero 8-10 inch perch were seen out of thousands of perch caught.
This summer it was fairly common to catch 8 inch perch with some as big as 10 inch caught.
Clearly there is more food for the perch.
This year we also tried some supplemental trout feeding. Trout as a result maintained or noticeable grew in size around areas with feeding. In other areas the larger trout had good body condition and did not seem to have significant weight loss as observed 3 years ago..
Based upon my observations I would encourage F&W and other agencies to try similar practice. I would encourage them to stock predatory trout species like brook and brown trout in a large burst to start targeting perch.
I would also encourage them to sell trout pellets at cost and encourage anglers to feed them to maintain size and quality while perch populations decrease.
I strongly believe we have greatly improved the trout fishing in Lake Sundance.
3 years ago we realistically had rainbow trout to 12 inches and perch to 6 inches
No we have rainbows to 22 inches, brook trout to 16 inches, brown trout to 16 inches and perch to 10 inches.
I hope browns will eventually get to 30 inches and would be happy to see brooks to 18 inch and rainbows to 24 inches and perch to 12 inches.
Chow
Sun