Yuba

[wormandbobber]

This is where we differ....for a small hammer handle to grow large, it just needs its fair share of forage and it will replace the harvested big fish rather quickly. But, those small fish won't fit through the bottleneck if there is too much competition....competition between pike big or small. The reality is that all of the pike will feed on the small carp fry, but only the big ones can feed on larger carp. I believe that by eliminating pike from all size ranges, you make room for better growth of the small ones and those that remain. And, by improving the growth rates of the small ones, you will ultimately end up with more large pike. If too few pike are harvested, you lose the large pike.

Right now, not much harvest is happening at Yuba because people aren't catching many....not because the fish are not there, but because they have a plentiful food source and they are not hungry. From what I understand from the most recent fish surveys is that we have good numbers of large pike. Catching them, though, is difficult. This to me is a sign of high growth rates...when the fishing was so good a few years ago, fish were readily caught because there wasn't an available food source and fish were hungry.

So, right now the hordes of fishermen are not flocking to Yuba to catch pike. What does that mean? It means that fewer pike will be harvested and the numbers of pike recruited into the system will increase rather than decrease.

Have you spent much time at Redmond?
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