11-30-2020, 11:26 PM
(11-30-2020, 11:18 PM)Springbuck1 Wrote: I like this a lot. What else can we do more of, to prevent stunting in lakes like PV?Unfortunately, there is no way of knowing in advance what perch are going to do in any given environment. Perch were never an issue in Pineview before the 1980s. Then, for some reason, the population exploded and the lake was suddenly filled with micro perch...no big ones. Doug Miller held winter ice fishing derbies on Pineview to encourage people to harvest more perch. And DWR planted tiger muskies...but they were overwhelmed by the sheer volume of perch and didn't seem to have any great effect.
In most waters where there are smallmouth and perch, the smallies help keep the perch in check. But still a large population of small perch in Pineview...in spite of goodly numbers of predators.
As has been mentioned, perch numbers are more subject to extreme water fluctuations than to angler pressure. Short of sucking all the water out of Pineview some year it is difficult to come up with a solution...especially when such a radical option would destroy all of the other good fisheries.