02-20-2011, 10:41 PM
I don't know how i feel about the 10 million estimate (I have heard that too) but there are WAY too many stripers in the lake. The problem is, we have millions of small stripers that gorge on our shad. If we anglers cut down on the numbers of small fish, the whole population will grow bigger as a result of the increased amount of food available. Hypothetically, if there are 500 stripers per acre in the lake, they get 'X amount' of food to share. If we lower that number to 200 stripers per acre, the amount of food available doesn't change, but each fish will eat more due to the lack of competition. Also, more shad will survive throughout the year to spawn, and out baitfish numbers would increase. Increased baitfish numbers mean healthier bass populations, too. If we succeed, our average striper size will more likely be upwards of five pounds instead of one, and we would see many more double digits. We need to practice selective harvesting of our fish to make the fishery what we want it to be. Kill and eat every striper you touch that is under 20" and I say release all over 20". We would have a healthy breeding stock of big fish, and successive generations would breed bigger and bigger as long as forage was available, and proper management was executed.
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