05-20-2016, 01:49 PM
[quote a_bow_nut]If I remember right the DWR did a survey of the fish in Pelican and found that even the older fish that they took scale samples fron were still only 12-14 inches long.
I will see if I can find that again when I can get to a computer.
It's hard to get big if there isn't any food.[/quote]
That's the concept Cliff doesn't understand...protecting the "big" fish doesn't do any good when fish are growing old without growing big. Hence, the word "stunting". When you have a "stunted" population of fish, fish growth is dramatically slowed because there are too many fish for available food. Protecting fish over say 16 inches in a bass population could only help if bass were growing to 16 inches. The problem at Jordanelle right now is that we have too many small bass to allow fish to grow to those big sizes.
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I will see if I can find that again when I can get to a computer.
It's hard to get big if there isn't any food.[/quote]
That's the concept Cliff doesn't understand...protecting the "big" fish doesn't do any good when fish are growing old without growing big. Hence, the word "stunting". When you have a "stunted" population of fish, fish growth is dramatically slowed because there are too many fish for available food. Protecting fish over say 16 inches in a bass population could only help if bass were growing to 16 inches. The problem at Jordanelle right now is that we have too many small bass to allow fish to grow to those big sizes.
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