10-26-2010, 04:51 PM
Well then I am with Lakextackle lets put 10,000 smallies in there at 6 inches. Their fry dying off all winter will provide food for bigger fish, and within a few years we will have 10,000 nice sized potentially trophy smallies there. Without really causing a detriment to the fishery overall.
[url "http://www.bassresource.com/fish_biology/smallmouth-fry.html"]http://www.bassresource.com/fish_biology/smallmouth-fry.html[/url] - this link is facts about small mouth bass interesting read.
"Smallmouth bass life spans about 15 years to rare instances of 18 year olds in northern waters." so the theory of the same bass over and over is somewhat viable.
OR we could think about this more logically, a 15" smallmouth produces about 20,000 eggs. All of the smallies caught ARE toads, so that puts them at the high egg yield area. Lets say that the typically around 1% of fry survive in northern waters to maturity, that is 200 fish per female . Now, due to the above stated challenges of Strawberry, lets drop that survival rate even lower to say 25% of 1% and that is 50 fish per female. Well considering no people even target smallmouth bass in strawberry, that would explain a very low catch rate. I would argue that they do spawn and they do survive, but not many survive. AND the lake is very big with people targeting other species, cause you won't catch any samllies trolling.
Just like the rainbow trout in Spirit Lake below Mt Saint Helens, life finds a way to survive, and then it thrives. Or the damn Chubs in strawberry for that matter, some survived all the poisoning and now look at the things thriving like crazy again!
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[url "http://www.bassresource.com/fish_biology/smallmouth-fry.html"]http://www.bassresource.com/fish_biology/smallmouth-fry.html[/url] - this link is facts about small mouth bass interesting read.
"Smallmouth bass life spans about 15 years to rare instances of 18 year olds in northern waters." so the theory of the same bass over and over is somewhat viable.
OR we could think about this more logically, a 15" smallmouth produces about 20,000 eggs. All of the smallies caught ARE toads, so that puts them at the high egg yield area. Lets say that the typically around 1% of fry survive in northern waters to maturity, that is 200 fish per female . Now, due to the above stated challenges of Strawberry, lets drop that survival rate even lower to say 25% of 1% and that is 50 fish per female. Well considering no people even target smallmouth bass in strawberry, that would explain a very low catch rate. I would argue that they do spawn and they do survive, but not many survive. AND the lake is very big with people targeting other species, cause you won't catch any samllies trolling.
Just like the rainbow trout in Spirit Lake below Mt Saint Helens, life finds a way to survive, and then it thrives. Or the damn Chubs in strawberry for that matter, some survived all the poisoning and now look at the things thriving like crazy again!
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