05-08-2015, 04:19 PM
[#0000FF]I have fished (and loved) Starvation since the 1970s. In days of old (before walleye, smallmouth and perch) the lake was wall to wall chubs. Disgusting. Couldn't even ice fish in the winter because your jig would never make it through the chubs. The predominant predator species was the brown trout. A few cutts and bows but mostly browns...and some bigguns.
I fished it every year at ice out...kicking my tube along the edge of the receding ice and pitching rainbow trout colored Rapalas. Caught lots of nice browns and donated Rapalas to some that might still be running. Yeah, right.
The DWR introduction of walleyes and smallmouths to control the chubs worked well. Too well. Within a short time the newbies had cleaned out the groceries (small chubs) and were stunting. There was actually a contract put on the walleyes and a netting operation in place.
Yellow perch "magically appeared" from somewhere and in a short time the lake became healthy for all species. The browns had taken a hit when the new kids ate all their formerly easy food supply but they established a decent population of at least decent sized fish...with a few big ones.
I like the idea of being able to catch more browns in the mix at Starvation. But after witnessing the rise and fall of species populations...based on the food chain...I question whether there will be enough to feed the new hungry mouths. Especially since the perch population took a big drop a couple of years ago. And those big browns do eat perch. Some eat crawdads but the biggest fish are piscivorous. In fact, browns that grow toward the 10 pound mark feed on newly planted footlong rainbows too. In fact, one of the 18 inch 'bows I caught two years ago had big teeth marks along both sides...fresh. If I didn't know better I would have guessed pike. But of course, we know that bucket biologists would never put pike anywhere they don't belong. Might have been a sabre-toothed carp.
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I fished it every year at ice out...kicking my tube along the edge of the receding ice and pitching rainbow trout colored Rapalas. Caught lots of nice browns and donated Rapalas to some that might still be running. Yeah, right.
The DWR introduction of walleyes and smallmouths to control the chubs worked well. Too well. Within a short time the newbies had cleaned out the groceries (small chubs) and were stunting. There was actually a contract put on the walleyes and a netting operation in place.
Yellow perch "magically appeared" from somewhere and in a short time the lake became healthy for all species. The browns had taken a hit when the new kids ate all their formerly easy food supply but they established a decent population of at least decent sized fish...with a few big ones.
I like the idea of being able to catch more browns in the mix at Starvation. But after witnessing the rise and fall of species populations...based on the food chain...I question whether there will be enough to feed the new hungry mouths. Especially since the perch population took a big drop a couple of years ago. And those big browns do eat perch. Some eat crawdads but the biggest fish are piscivorous. In fact, browns that grow toward the 10 pound mark feed on newly planted footlong rainbows too. In fact, one of the 18 inch 'bows I caught two years ago had big teeth marks along both sides...fresh. If I didn't know better I would have guessed pike. But of course, we know that bucket biologists would never put pike anywhere they don't belong. Might have been a sabre-toothed carp.
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