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Looks like a good place to put some wipers. a lot of wipers.Trout can not keep up with how the chubs spawn but wipers grow fast and will eat all of the young of the year. Then with the chubs thinned out the trout get bigger the wipers get huge and you have a lake worth fishing again. I hope they try that instead of treating it again. Minersville is doing excellent now.
Strawberry is a prime example that Trout can not dominate over the chubs. I have seen the chub population getting bigger and bigger even with the slot.
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[quote fishinfool]
Strawberry is a prime example that Trout can not dominate over the chubs. I have seen the chub population getting bigger and bigger even with the slot.
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Hope not to highjack this thread, but I believe the annual gill-netting studies are actually showing the opposite. I know that I used to be able to net chubs and shiners on the docks at Strawberry (once got over 100 with one toss of my casting net) and I looked Saturday and could not see any minnows around the docks at Soldier Creek. I have seen some large schools of huge chubs but I believe the cutts are eating almost all of the young chubs and they have pretty much removed all of the redsided shiners.
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[quote fishinfool]Strawberry is a prime example that Trout can not dominate over the chubs. I have seen the chub population getting bigger and bigger even with the slot.[/quote]
As Kent pointed out, the gillnet surveys flatly contradict your conjecture. What you catch on a rod and reel is not representative of the biology below the surface. The report stated there are mature chubs in Strawberry (old holdover too big for the Cutts to eat), but that the upcoming age classes are consistently wiped out by the trout, as designed.
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The middle of summer is Chub season at Scofield.
I've done very, very well fishing for Cutts up at Scofield earlier this year... but not in the heat of summer and certainly not trolling.
Since 2012, I have had very few October/November trips to Scofield without catching at least one 24" cutt and several over 20".
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I also was at Scofield last week and had just the opposite experience. Three of us one adult two kids, got 81 cuts and tigers, and TWO chubs. White tubes and chub meat was the way to go. Most were 14 to 16 inches, a few smaller and a few bigger.
That has been the outcome for the last 4 trips. All in the 80's. In April the # were higher and the fish larger. (One was 26" 7 #) Put a worm on and the numbers switch.
It will surprise you if you read the DNR gill net report and see what is happening. It is tough to catch a tiger at SF because they know exactly what a small chub is like. It is also hard to catch a chub under 6".
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What kind of body condition are the trout in that you are catching this year?
Some reports indicate they are all thin, other suggest the slot fish are OK. It is hard to know what to believe with all the different reports.
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Hmm. I need some more bait. I think I may be making a trip up there soon.[sly]
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It's been similar to the last couple years -- the fish under about 15" are rockets.
I seem to catch very few between 15" and 19". The one I did catch was healthy.
And the 20"+ fish are FAT. (See Avatar. 27" Scofield Cutt).
Clearly the little trout have trouble competing with the chubs. But as soon as they can start feeding on the mid-larger chubs, they get BIG quickly.
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to see how bad the chubs have overtaken scofield.
