Chubs at Fish Lake and a tagged perch

[Jedidiah]

From my limited point of view, the perch at Fish Lake have gotten better this year from last year and the year before. March 2015 I went to Fish Lake once and caught about 35 perch in a couple hours, they were all under 4 inches. 2016, two trips totaled about 140 perch and maybe 30% of those were 4 inches and under. This year I'm at two trips and about 110 and around 15-20% were 4 inches and under. Caught a tagged one last time! Generally I always sightfish for perch, so I can see a good deal of the bottom and I can tell you that places where there were massive piles of milfoil there is now maybe a third of the same amount of vegetation. If I recall, the year they introduced the weevil was 2014/15, and I can tell you that there was a massive, detached weed mat under the ice in a ring that seemed to go around the whole reservoir. I realize that my catches are a narrow sample, but having covered some ground on the west side I am pretty sure that a lot of the milfoil has at least been reduced in stature.

Things really might be getting better fast. The lakers and splake should start eating kokanee, the kokanee will capitalize on the plankton that is mostly under-utilized in the water column from 70-130 FOW, the perch cover seems to be receding.

All in all I would say it's much more fair to manage it back into a splake/laker fishery though. I always have TubeDude's perch treasure map of Starvation to get me a perch chowder supply.
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