09-15-2019, 12:38 AM
[#0000FF]I think you are smack spang on with the perch to walleye ratio thing. When I returned to Utah from Arizona, in 2004, perch were just starting to blossom in Starvation. The walleyes and smallies had been stunting...after eating up all the chubs they had been hired to clean out. The magical appearance of perch was literally a lifesaver for those two predatory species.
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[#0000FF]Perch continued to multiply exponentially and the predators loved it. And, of course, perch are cannibalistic and rely on an abundance of their own offspring to grow and prosper. And they did. Starvation became overrun with perch of all sizes and age classes. It was easy to catch more than 100 in a short time. And if you were good...and lucky...you would end up with a fair number of keepers. My own standards were a minimum of 9" for the fillet board. And there were days I weeded through grundles of dinks to get a limit of 50 keepers. I did not feel like I was depleting a resource since there were so many. And there were a pretty fair number of 13 and even 14 inchers in the mix on some days.[/#0000FF]
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[#0000FF]Perchorama continued until late into the ice fishing season in the winter of 2013 - 2014. At ice out in late February of 2014 earlybird anglers reported large numbers of dead perch washed up at various spots around the lake...of all sizes...so it was not just a post spawn dieoff.[/#0000FF]
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[#0000FF]Since then perch have been scarce. A two perch day has been rare until the last year or so when isolated groups of decent sized perch have put in an appearance for an angler or two. But those same anglers have seldom been able to go back and duplicate a random good catch. And, as you have pointed out, there is not a wide range of sizes and age classes. Most perch caught recently seem to fall into the midsize range...with no little ones and few bigger ones.[/#0000FF]
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[#0000FF]The hope is that there are enough large breeding perch to pull off a few years of successful spawning with good recruitment. The main problem...with the lake being out of balance in the predator-prey ratios...is that the overabundant smallies, wallies and perch clean up the young of the year before they have a chance to grow to maturity. It is just like what happened to the chubs...from obscene numbers to a few remaining spawners...which cannot produce enough young to feed all the hungry mouths.[/#0000FF]
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[#0000FF]We can always hope. But in my old man's pessimistic outlook, the heyday of the perch and good sizes and numbers of walleyes is over. Not sure what it might take to ever restore what once was. But I
ly suspect that Starvation might be another Yuba story. Remember when? And wish it was like that again.
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[#0000FF]Perch continued to multiply exponentially and the predators loved it. And, of course, perch are cannibalistic and rely on an abundance of their own offspring to grow and prosper. And they did. Starvation became overrun with perch of all sizes and age classes. It was easy to catch more than 100 in a short time. And if you were good...and lucky...you would end up with a fair number of keepers. My own standards were a minimum of 9" for the fillet board. And there were days I weeded through grundles of dinks to get a limit of 50 keepers. I did not feel like I was depleting a resource since there were so many. And there were a pretty fair number of 13 and even 14 inchers in the mix on some days.[/#0000FF]
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[#0000FF]Perchorama continued until late into the ice fishing season in the winter of 2013 - 2014. At ice out in late February of 2014 earlybird anglers reported large numbers of dead perch washed up at various spots around the lake...of all sizes...so it was not just a post spawn dieoff.[/#0000FF]
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[#0000FF]Since then perch have been scarce. A two perch day has been rare until the last year or so when isolated groups of decent sized perch have put in an appearance for an angler or two. But those same anglers have seldom been able to go back and duplicate a random good catch. And, as you have pointed out, there is not a wide range of sizes and age classes. Most perch caught recently seem to fall into the midsize range...with no little ones and few bigger ones.[/#0000FF]
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[#0000FF]The hope is that there are enough large breeding perch to pull off a few years of successful spawning with good recruitment. The main problem...with the lake being out of balance in the predator-prey ratios...is that the overabundant smallies, wallies and perch clean up the young of the year before they have a chance to grow to maturity. It is just like what happened to the chubs...from obscene numbers to a few remaining spawners...which cannot produce enough young to feed all the hungry mouths.[/#0000FF]
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[#0000FF]We can always hope. But in my old man's pessimistic outlook, the heyday of the perch and good sizes and numbers of walleyes is over. Not sure what it might take to ever restore what once was. But I
ly suspect that Starvation might be another Yuba story. Remember when? And wish it was like that again.[/#0000FF]
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