Are Lake Cassidy bass stunted?

[HillbillyGeek]

Has anyone else noticed that the majority of 15+" bass caught in lake Cassidy are long & lean? Some of them look skinny in an unhealthy kind of way.

Between perch, crappie, stocked trout, and various small edible critters, there's lots of bass chow.

We all know that the crappie in that lake are stunted thanks to the "special" restriction. (Can you say "overpopulate"?)

Are bass stunted too?

Bass anglers who catch & release *all* of their fish may actually be contributing to the problem. Keeping a few small ones could improve the fishery a lot.

Or not.

What do you think?

[kzoo]

I've seen it happen to a lake that I grew up fishing at. Are you catching a lot of bass the same length and that skinny? It also could be genetics.

[fishnislife]

Sounds like the lake could be stunted. Give it a few goes at least. You just might have been taggin rats that day or in an area were there are a bunch sharing the same forage. Also, lakes go through cycles and this just might be the down years for this lake. I have a lake around here that I have been watching for years now and it has been in the stunted cycle for sometime. It is just now starting to come out of it. Hopefully in the next couple years I will begin to see a lot of bigger fish. Survival of the fittest. Or the way I look at it, kind of like you have a huge middle class sharing the wealth. Over time eventually there becomes a seperation of lower class and upper class. Bigger fish being your upper class. The middle class dwindles but is still present, the lower class grows (your rats or dink fish) and your upper class thrives.
It just takes some time for the strong to over come and begin to push the other weeker fish out. Or you'll have a pack (or a couple of packs) of strong bass take over and grow together.





fishnislife

[rjn cajun]

Fishnislife sounds like your talking more about the economy then the lake.LOL

[FishTank]

Fishnislife sounds like your talking more about the economy then the lake.LOL

He's basically right, though. The slot limit is not a necessary evil to create bigger, healthier bass. Many lakes in the east just ran their course and the bigger bass eventually began to dominate and run off the dinks. You do not have to worry about the bigger bass starving. They will run the dinks off or kill the dinks so that the bigger bass have their own hunting grounds.

This idea that we need to clear the lakes of the baby bass is something I find potentially disastrous down the road. Bass under 10" should be set free to swim another day until they're more edible and a bit smarter. Or... you end up having Joe Dummy catching all of this years' fingerlings and thinking he has a fish fry.

[Shadow Caster]

I was thinking the same thing about one of my local lakes here in Carnation, same thing as Cassidy trout stocked, great cover and such and all I could pull out was 8-12"ers. Until this year that is. This year the fish are bigger, fatter and stronger and I'm not seeing as many of the little guys, so maybe the cycle has come full circle here.

Give it a few years or change up the areas that you fish too, you'd be surprised how much of an effect going 5-10' deeper will have. That is another thing that I had to come to grips with when fishing this lake, I thought, well stumps and cover is in 3-5' of water, so the big fish had to be hanging there and all I would catch were the little guys. It wasn't until I went to that next dropoff point that I started finding the bigger fish.