05-22-2013, 03:21 PM
coyote -- I appreciate your optimism. Take a look at Wayne's Words and you'll see that Wayne doesn't exactly share your optimism.
Lake Powell has always had these fluctuations with stripers. Here's a quick run-down of how it has historically worked:
1. threadfin shad adults are small -- up to 8"
2. striper populations feed on shad.
3. When striper populations get to high levels they can easily wipe out (or nearly wipe out) the threadfin population.
4. When this happens, forage becomes scarce and stripers move into the main channel in search of forage. What they find is anchovy chum. Anglers then catch stripers by the 100's because they are starving and willing to eat anything they can find.
5. With threadfin numbers knocked back so severely by large populations of stripers, it takes a number of years before threadfin have good spawns to get their population numbers back up.
6. due to low numbers of threadfin, the stripers continue to starve. Their population will crash.
We are currently in that max striper population cycle, and they are starving to death. Just look at them, and you can see their condition is going downhill fast. We will have a die-off this summer.
However, optimism can continue to be high. Why? Gizzard shad! Gizzard shad populations are now firmly in place. This is good news -- because Gizzard shad adults are large -- around 22" and 4lbs. The majority of stripers cannot feed on adult gizzard shad. This means that we should get a good spawn EVERY YEAR. This would tremendously help the striper populations rebound from crashes quicker!
Fishing at Powell right now for stripers is phenomenal. There is only 1 way it can go, which is down. Hopefully with gizzard shad firmly established, the downhill slide will be minimized and we'll have good fishing for years to come.
Concerning quality of striper fillets: if your filleting fish that is starving to death, I would expect the quality to be poor.
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Lake Powell has always had these fluctuations with stripers. Here's a quick run-down of how it has historically worked:
1. threadfin shad adults are small -- up to 8"
2. striper populations feed on shad.
3. When striper populations get to high levels they can easily wipe out (or nearly wipe out) the threadfin population.
4. When this happens, forage becomes scarce and stripers move into the main channel in search of forage. What they find is anchovy chum. Anglers then catch stripers by the 100's because they are starving and willing to eat anything they can find.
5. With threadfin numbers knocked back so severely by large populations of stripers, it takes a number of years before threadfin have good spawns to get their population numbers back up.
6. due to low numbers of threadfin, the stripers continue to starve. Their population will crash.
We are currently in that max striper population cycle, and they are starving to death. Just look at them, and you can see their condition is going downhill fast. We will have a die-off this summer.
However, optimism can continue to be high. Why? Gizzard shad! Gizzard shad populations are now firmly in place. This is good news -- because Gizzard shad adults are large -- around 22" and 4lbs. The majority of stripers cannot feed on adult gizzard shad. This means that we should get a good spawn EVERY YEAR. This would tremendously help the striper populations rebound from crashes quicker!
Fishing at Powell right now for stripers is phenomenal. There is only 1 way it can go, which is down. Hopefully with gizzard shad firmly established, the downhill slide will be minimized and we'll have good fishing for years to come.
Concerning quality of striper fillets: if your filleting fish that is starving to death, I would expect the quality to be poor.
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