Illegally stocked perch

[AK47]

Originally Posted by Sundancefisher

...Midnapore has stopped their netting activities so they should be going the other way.

Well just to show you what it looked like to fish perch in Midnapore 3 years ago. That all was cought by one person from one hole in 2.5-3 hr.

[Sundancefisher]

Originally Posted by gdbccb

Sundance, your comment makes me wonder about another option for dealing with stunted perch - feeding them!

Seriously, is there any reason why you couldn't come up with some kind of bulk fish food you could dump into a lake like Hasse to increase the size of the perch to the point of actually making it worthwhile to go and catch them?

sigh

[Sundancefisher]

Originally Posted by AK47

Well just to show you what it looked like to fish perch in Midnapore 3 years ago. That all was caught by one person from one hole in 2.5-3 hr.

So unless you guys caught 90,000 perch since then...with the lake no longer controlling perch...what do think is happening?

[AK47]

Originally Posted by Sundancefisher

So unless you guys caught 90,000 perch since then...with the lake no longer controlling perch...what do think is happening?

well, lets ask them to let us go on Midnapore and do some fishing research. I promise to release all trout I catch.

[gdbccb]

Originally Posted by Sundancefisher

sigh

Not sure why you're sighing - I am genuinely curious as to why artificially increasing the food supply would or wouldn't work. Why couldn't you turn the likes of Hasse into a form of "fish farm".

I have read the SRD report linked in one of the above post and was dismayed, in particular, by the table at the end that shows attempts to kill off a stunted perch population and restock a lake rarely if ever work. I think I also understand the approach you are heading up at Lake Sundance of trying to cull the stunted perch population to see if that has the effect of gradually increasing the size of the perch. Basically, what you appear to be doing on Lake Sundance is to increase the "per perch" food supply by significantly reducing the stunted perch population through aggressive fishing/netting. Hence my question - why not try increasing the "per perch" food supply by dumping more perch food into the lake?

Be assured I am in no way condoning "bucket biology" - I think the yahoos that introduce perch into stocked lakes like Sundance and Hasse should be waterboarded. I am just trying to understand what works and doesn't work among the various options of dealing with the aftermath of their ignorance.

[Sundancefisher]

Originally Posted by gdbccb

Not sure why you're sighing - I am genuinely curious as to why artificially increasing the food supply would or wouldn't work. Why couldn't you turn the likes of Hasse into a form of "fish farm".

Public fishery...cost to buy food...while increasing food supply will allow for a bit of a growth spurt...exponential population growth will keep the population stunting.

1) Public fishery...I can hear a huge out cry to taking any fishery away from the public to use as a fish farm. Farming perch is possible as they do have great growth rates when supplied with food...but many issues still exist and primarily around population density.

2) Private fishery...the huge cost to feed the perch to keep them growing would be more than out paced by the population growth. You would need to pull a million or more perch a year out of that lake. Only a commercial fishery would have a chance to do that.

A more logical solution would be to allow a combination of commercial perch fishery and public perch and trout angling fishery. Problem is then there is incentive for certain people to put perch in other lakes hoping maybe for their own commercial venture. This would unfortunately break this idea. A stretch that could work would be someday to have a fish and game association buy the nets, manage the nets and use the profits to support improving fishing in that body of water.

I have read the SRD report linked in one of the above post and was dismayed, in particular, by the table at the end that shows attempts to kill off a stunted perch population and restock a lake rarely if ever work. The big problems with rotenone is where you can not directly treat the water to get to the fish. Beaver dams, inflowing tribs, fresh water springs, muskeg or floating vegetation will all leave refugiums for the little guys to hide in. Just need a couple to make the problem again. Lake Sundance is the optimum place to use rotenone as we are just a bowl of water. That being said...politics come into play.I think I also understand the approach you are heading up at Lake Sundance of trying to cull the stunted perch population to see if that has the effect of gradually increasing the size of the perch. Basically, what you appear to be doing on Lake Sundance is to increase the "per perch" food supply by significantly reducing the stunted perch population through aggressive fishing/netting. Hence my question - why not try increasing the "per perch" food supply by dumping more perch food into the lake? The inverse relationship between removing 50,000 perch and feeding 50,000 is problematic at best. Feeding 50,000 fish is very expensive. In a lake like Hasse we would be talking about feeding 1,000,000 perch every day...all year long. Also perch like live food (maybe someone in Saskatchewan can catch all their grasshoppers in the summer and drop them on the lake ). Hard to train them to eat pellets although some aquaculture research place has some limited success. In a large lake it is hard to deliver food effectively and economically.
Be assured I am in no way condoning "bucket biology" - I think the yahoos that introduce perch into stocked lakes like Sundance and Hasse should be waterboarded. I am just trying to understand what works and doesn't work among the various options of dealing with the aftermath of their ignorance.

I thought you were maybe trying to tease based upon my early post to feeding perch. I appreciate your interest in this topic and would love to have you come and catch perch some day.

This is a very interesting topic that will be around for a long, long time.

There is no easy management scheme for perch other than rotenone or net. Each one has it's issues.

The option of letting the perch take over...just ruins the chance of any decent fishery.

[Sundancefisher]

Originally Posted by AK47

well, lets ask them to let us go on Midnapore and do some fishing research. I promise to release all trout I catch.

I don't know anyone at Midnapore to get me in to perch fish. I will have to track someone down. Three years ago they were not a bad size. They are either 10 inches now or dead.

[AK47]

Originally Posted by Sundancefisher

I don't know anyone at Midnapore to get me in to perch fish. I will have to track someone down. Three years ago they were not a bad size. They are either 10 inches now or dead.

Yeah, my friend who used to live there moved, so I did not fish ir for last 3 years either. Have no idea how situation with perch is there now.

[burningfreak]

I must confess, I once stocked the pond at the courthouse in grande prairie with goldfish. Seeing as how its a manmade pond they drain yearly it came to no harm, however, thinking one can improve a fishery through random unresearched stocking is assinine. Thinking one can then improve the mess they've made by introducing even more fish reminds me of swallowing a spider to catch the fly. Not that I am fully against stocking, but just trying to say that the easy solution isnt always the best. By continuing to tamper we run the risk of running into similar territory as the re-introduced wolf vs elk situation in Colorado. I just think that we need to take a long hard look at our solutions before we implement them so we dont become responsible for worsening the circumstances...