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| alot of lakes that once had a crazy amount of rustys and lost alot or almost all of their weeds seem to be coming back with more and more weeds..is this to assume that the smallies etc are putting a dent in the rustys so weeds are now coming back ?
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Posts: 16632
Location: The desert | Brad,
It could be that the rusty's have eaten themselves out of food and are now starving to death and allowing the weeds to start coming back. That scenario coupled with the smallies doing some damage on the remaining starved rusty's could by why you are seeing a rebound in the weeds. |
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Posts: 3518
Location: north central wisconsin | Do the Rustys tear into the Milfoil like they do native veggies?? I can remember just starting to study them at UWSP when there, but alot needed to be learned by the proffessionals yet. Mike has it right though, as they do seem to cycle out once they've beaten the weeds down. One 150 acre pond in southern Vilas used to be my favorite little cabbage lake. It just got hammered by them. The Muskies, though still in there, have been tougher to nail down the past couple years. |
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Posts: 16632
Location: The desert | Must have been nice to actually learn about things that are interesting.....so far in 3 years all I have learned is there are a lot of BAD prof's out there! |
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Posts: 34
Location: Forest Lake Minnesota | Maybe the MN DNR should stock smallmouth bass in Leech Lake. I for one am infavor of this if it would help and the potential for big smallmouths in that lake would be good.
Good Luck,
Dave |
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Posts: 8782
| I don't think rusty crayfish are the answer to the millfoil problem. As bottom dwellers, they might actually make the problem worse. Feeding on the bottom of the plant would leave the top portions to float away and take root somewhere else, which would actually contribute to the milfoil problem. |
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Posts: 3518
Location: north central wisconsin | Mike, going to UWSP taking the same classes and seeing some of the products of those profs, has been why I do not take every word of some of our experts as gospel. If they learned from bad profs, how good can they be?? I feel the quality experts in the field that are worthy of their titles, learned much of what they know, while doing their Masters work out on their own, and that has set them apart from the rest. Just observations and opinion of course. That said, I had some outstanding professors there too, and my upper level coursework instructors were very well versed in their teachings, though I was not a fisheries major. If I were you, and held those opinions, I'd let my advisor and dean(is it still Dr. Haney?) know about it. You are paying thier wage and for quality instruction. If the masses agree with you, then there is a problem.
Edited by Reef Hawg 1/3/2007 4:13 PM
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Posts: 16632
Location: The desert | I'm hoping that now that I am taking some "real" courses that the professors will get better. I've tried to play "I pay your salary card numerous times." I still get blown off by profs and others. I also do a lot of reading about stuff I care about on my own and form my own opinions on what I see out fishing or in the field.
This semester.....no general chemistry, biology, psychology, sociology, math or any of those relatively dull uneventfull subjects! I got to learn about FISH!!! |
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Location: New Richmond, WI | I have a cabin on the Upper Eau Claire lake in northern Wisconsin. We have been watching the rusty's come up river for the last 20 years. Right now the Lower and Middle Eau Claire have almost all the weed beds eaten, the Upper is just now getting hit, the only thing slowing them down getting to our lake was the dam, but they made it.
Since they have just gotten to our lake they are larger than those on Middle and Lower, like someone said before they are eating themselves out of food and growing smaller with lack of food. Like Steve said earlier that in the right conditions if you look at the floor of the lake in some areas the floor does move because of so many crawdads.
This last year I have just started to notice that some of the thick weedlines were getting more and more sparse, not as tall. I don't know if lack of weeds had anything to do with this but this was the first year that you were not swearing at all the small hamerhandles hitting our lures. Bass population is up but will never put a dent in the crawdad population.
I was told Yellow Lake in WI put sturgeon in the lake with some success. I haven't been able to look into that yet. Upper had sturgeon in the lake before the dams were put in so I don't know if that would be a option.
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Location: Northern Wisconsin | the lake i used to fish had so many on most spots of the lake if you let you leech or crawler sit on the bottem
a rusty would cling on. |
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Posts: 20219
Location: oswego, il | Rusties are in the lakes down here too EA. This is not gospel but an observation. It seems where weeds grow in harder bottom like sand or areas that are not total muck is where the rusties do the damage. I have seen some backwater muck areas where it seems they don't touch that weedgrowth. Many of the lakes near us are primarily muck and the weeds much more dense, that too can possibly be an issue as well, weed density. |
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Posts: 770
Location: Ames, Iowa | This topic got covered really well back in September on Jim Murphy's site, fishingleechlake.com
I have seen the entire Battle Point cabbage bed disappear in the last 4 years. Last year I could not find it. Portage Bay weeds are getting harder to find. Very bad looking cabbage all over Leech last summer. Now all this might be caused by the lower water level (though that might help cabbage growth) warm water, boat traffic, global warming, but when you put an underwater camera in the water in some places on that lake, the bottom moves it is so thick with crayfish. What impact do they have on the eggs of spawners and on the forage fishes' ability to find cover? We have commercial trappers come and take them by the pontoon-load, but there are only a few of them and the lake is 112,000 acres, and still the crayfish are there in unreal numbers. I think if there is any benefit of the rusty's it's that when small they make great food for the walleyes and perch. I do not know if the intro of smallies on this fishery will impact the rusty for quite alot of years. And what impact could the intro of smallies have on the other gamefish? So many issues created by the addition of this exotic.
Don
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