Rockport 9/26/24

[MrShane]

I kinda doubt Rockport will ever see a perch crash...or even a major stunting.  It is one of those lakes in which the primary forage for larger perch is baby perch.  and with the rocky shoreline there is almost always a good spawn and TONS of baby perch in the lake.  Two years ago I was fishing the perch late summer and Chris Penne and the DWR folks were there doing some surveys.  At that time he indicated they were marking huge schools of baby perch from shoreline out to over 60 feet deep...and seeing marks of larger fish around even the deepest schools of young.  

I have observed larger perch stratifying at levels well above bottom in deeper water in several reservoirs.  Most notably in Starvation and in Deer Creek.  And even in Pineview a couple of times.  In cases where it was possible to examine more closely it was found that the newly hatched baby perch...upon which the larger ones were feeding...were following the stratified concentrations of zooplankton.  Kinda like kokes do.  And in Starvation, one year, trollers were catching walleyes only 10-20 feet deep...over 40 - 60 feet of water...because they were following the bigger perch that were following the smaller perch that were feeding on the zooplankton.  It's a food chain thang.

In short, perch create their own perpetual motion machine.  The more adults and the more they spawn the more food there is and the more the adults can grow to spawning size.  In lakes with those conditions the fish are much more susceptible to dieoffs from species specific diseases or parasites than to angler pressure.  And that is what we have seen in Starvation and Jordanelle over the years.  And Yuba used to be a fantastic perch fishery...until the major drought of the early 2000s killed off all the big spawners and it never recovered.  Broke the food chain.

I hope you are right Pat.
RP is a fun place to fish and ‘most’ of the PS don’t put in the extra miles and drop in at Jordy or EC.