Dusty,

Removing the large fish doesn't stunt the fishery, unless you are removing the majority of these large fish, and you have large numbers of other fish, and limited food or shelter. There are alot of factors beyond the removal of large fish. That is a big assumption that the large fish aren't being replaced by other slightly smaller fish. Again, it isn't the removal of the fish as much as it is the other characteristics of the pond or lake. The limted or overabundance of other fish and prey items is what will cause the stunting of the population.

My experiences are mostly in the south, and this isn't an issue. I could see this happening on farm ponds, but I don't see it happening these days on any moderate to large body of water.

Perch do the same thing, and are stunted very often due to competition for food resources. Overharvest of black bass at the magnitude needed to achieve what you've described (granted this may be possible in a small pond) isn't occuring.

See, that is where the issue comes up...in the south resources are NOT limited. In many northern lakes and ponds resources are limited. In my travels around NY as a DEC employee I personally fished/electrofished/netted 116 lakes and ponds. Stunting DOES happen in our northern lakes. I had one fish for example that was 16 years old and 11.5 inches long. This lake (107 acres) just so happens to have a fish and game club on it that has a fish fry every Sat night. This club has been in existance for over 40 years and they have had the tradition for many of the 40 years. Pictures clearly illustrate that there used to be many large fish in the lake, but they have overharvested the crap out of the big ones, and now all that is left are hundreds of thousands of small panfish and bass. The old timers are complaingin to the DEc that they can't catch any big fish now, and want them to do somethign about it, but they refuse to keep a bass under 15 inches because its difficult to fillet and get enough meat for ameal. A CLEAR CUT example of overharvesting large fish.

There are two lakes in connecticut that i would be willing to say are stockpiled or stunted. Wyassup and Middle Bolton. I have scales from fish at both and am going to get age frequency data as soon as I get a chance.

Stockpiling is not overly common, but it does happen and can potentially happen to many of our smaller lakes/ponds.

I should have the age/frequency data fro the NY lake, let me go back through my files. The only report written was for the Mercury contamination, thats why we collected fish from each lake (sampled).

Dusty,

Earlier in this thread you said something like "if ten large bass were removed from a pond/lake it would make an impact, but nobody would notice". I would think that the fishing for large bass would become much tougher without those 10 bass available. How many bass over 4 pounds are there in an average 200-300 acre lake in CT? I would think that 10 would make up a noticeable percentage?

I am not taking issue with your statement, just trying to learn something. Thanks in advance.

Huskybass

Yea, its defiantely WAY more than you would think. You fish Amos a lot right....the DEP found 15.5 bass over 15 inches per HOUR of electrofishing. Now a 15 inch bass is not quite 4 pounds but, and hour of electrofishing samples about 500 yards of shoreline and NO deeper water. If they can get 16 per hour just on shore (under 5 feet) think of how many they didn't get. It is next to impossible to determine how many there truly are...but it is a lot more than any of us anglers are willing to believe

If i had to make an educated guess, 10 bass over 4 lbs in a 200 acre lake with average production and fish densities....at most 2-5% of the fish over 4 lbs were killed.