05-20-2013, 03:22 PM
[quote a_bow_nut]They have been talking about this over on Waynes Words alot this year. It seems that if the stripers are looking skinny then the meat on them has been comming up mushy.[/quote]
Remember that the stripers are starving to death!!
This is why fishing has been so great this year for the stripers. They have peaked out -- their population has risen so high that they will (have) wiped out the available forage and are now starving to death. I would guess that the "mushy" fish were the larger sized stripers, which are the group that will begin to struggle the most. The smaller stripers are able to handle the warmer surface water temperatures, and thus can continue to prey upon the shad that are still in the lake. As water temps warm, the larger stripers will be forced deeper where there is no forage, and they will begin to atrophy until they die.
The population will most likely crash this summer -- which is both good and bad. Hopefully the gizzard shad will help improve the recovery time of stripers by providing a spawn every year, unlike the threadfin shad which would get nearly wiped out when striper populations reached levels like what we see today.
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Remember that the stripers are starving to death!!
This is why fishing has been so great this year for the stripers. They have peaked out -- their population has risen so high that they will (have) wiped out the available forage and are now starving to death. I would guess that the "mushy" fish were the larger sized stripers, which are the group that will begin to struggle the most. The smaller stripers are able to handle the warmer surface water temperatures, and thus can continue to prey upon the shad that are still in the lake. As water temps warm, the larger stripers will be forced deeper where there is no forage, and they will begin to atrophy until they die.
The population will most likely crash this summer -- which is both good and bad. Hopefully the gizzard shad will help improve the recovery time of stripers by providing a spawn every year, unlike the threadfin shad which would get nearly wiped out when striper populations reached levels like what we see today.
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