Stripers - Bull Shoals Fishery Meeting

[hogwall]

I live in northern Wisconsin and all the guys that have trouble catching walleye say the muskies are eating them but study after study and taxidermist say they don't.Plain and simple muskies as well as stripers have their prefered food source and thats what they eat 99% of the time.Up here poor walleye fishing is usually a result of a big perch hatch or fisherman that don't know how to fish and they use muskies to cover up their short comings.If Bass fiserman are worried about stripers hurting bass fishing,why don't they push to close bass season during the spawn to protect the spawning bass?or restrict the tournaments?Those two items would go a long way to help bass populations.How about a 1 over size limit like 1 bass over 18 inches per day?Stripers hurting bass fishing if stocked right is minor compared to the issues I brought up.By the way up here bass are catch and release till the 3rd saturday in june to protect the spawn and since that rule went into effect our bass fishing has gotten better many times over.Common sense guys, protect your spawning fish if you want better bass fishing.

[Ham]

If Bass fiserman are worried about stripers hurting bass fishing,why don't they push to close bass season during the spawn to protect the spawning bass?or restrict the tournaments?Those two items would go a long way to help bass populations.How about a 1 over size limit like 1 bass over 18 inches per day? By the way up here bass are catch and release till the 3rd saturday in june to protect the spawn and since that rule went into effect our bass fishing has gotten better many times over.Common sense guys, protect your spawning fish if you want better bass fishing.

You simply can't say that what works in Wisconsin will automatically work here. Different climate and different type lakes with different species mix. BSL is fishing great right now. Risking the known quality of the lake for a shot at great striper fishing is a hard sell to none striper fishermen. I'm pretty sure we could maintain great fishing at BSL by maintaining water levels 5-10 foot above pool until the middle of June once every 3-5 years.

[Wayne SW/MO]

Since the large reservoir building era began, Gizzard shad have presented a problem. They not only develop a huge biomass, they have few predators. They came from the creeks and rivers where gar and cat's fed on them, but the gar didn't follow them into the resovoirs, at least not in equal numbers. The cats don't normally hunt the open water for food.

I fished Texoma heavily before and after they were introduced there and never saw any decline in the bass population or success ratio. There was a decline eventually, but it was do to environmental changes and stockings of smallmouth cured most of that. To the best of my knowledge the only species that suffered a decline was the sand bass, but the population was huge and I don't know the final word on that.

The biggest reason for the lack of conflicts is simply that the two species hunt and feed in different spheres. Stripers feed just like whites, by herding shad in open water.

[taxidermist]

There are not the number of large crappie for some reason, I have friends in central Arkansas that catch alot of 15-16 inch crappie and you dont see those coming from any of the highland res.. It has to be the depth and infertile water. You go west in Kansas and there are a lot in the 15 inch range, go north to the flat shallow lakes and the samething.

You go east into the flat shallow lakes and guess what larger crappie.

In the early years of Bull SHoals and Table Rock when the lake was very fertile there were some large crappie, but you dont see the three pound crappie anymore, not even in upper Bull. Fishing PRESSURE??? I doubt it or the walleye would not be over running Bull. When I fish some of the more remote parts of BUll I see a lot of undersized Walleye being kept and filleted, yea there are hundred of people who come in to some of the resors and fillet every fish they catch.

You want to help the bass, stop fishing spawning beds!!!!! stop the tourneys during this time, give the fry a chance. thats what hit largemouth bass the worst.

Ever wonder why some states have closed bass season??

You pull a bedding bass from a nest and sunfish run in and eat everything in sight. You cannot say its not so because you know it is true. you pull a bass from the bed, haul it 30 miles in a tournament and then release it somewhere else it will not find is way back and then its to late for the fry.

Striper have been in BS for about 30-40 years and most of you young guns did not know it, most of you were not born when the first striper went in the lake and they never hurt anything, but also back then there was no size limit on bass!!

So while this rages on what happened to all the 4-5lbspots that use to come out of the lake???? Has breeding with largemouth and smallmouth done away with them too? or was it the bad bad stripers that inhabit the open water?

[Sprint21fter]

If you want to fish for stripers go to Beaver, Norfork. Don't put anymore of them in the

White-river lakes. Bass fishing on Bull Shoals is getting better and better with the smaller numbers of stripers that was accidently stocked in BS. Don't hear about

alot of the bass weights because its not talked about as much as Table Rock.

[Champster]

I have been following this thread and feel a need to chime in. As for the bass fishing. Tournaments have been the worst thing to happen to bass fishing all across the nation more than anything else. The only thing bass tournament fishing is about is MONEY, MONEY, MONEY. I am originally from Florida and have bass fished since I was 4 years old (started with my father), and remember the days when we would have 150 (no exageration) bass a day catches (and release most except those to eat) with at least one over 6lbs and the occasional 10+. Largest one to date was 16 1/2 and all on artificial baits. This was throughout the 60's and 70's. Then came Tom Mann and Bassmasters in the 70's. In the early 80's when B.A.S.S. was getting popular and everyone and their brother called themselves a Bass fisherman, entering tournaments with rocket sleds and rude as he%$ on the water, putting 100 to 150 boats on a lake every Saturday, destroyed the fishery and it has never recovered. Nowadays they go out and beat the water to death to catch 5 measley fish looking like Patch Pirate Indy car drivers and acting like rock stars at weigh-ins. It is disgusting and you cannot tell me that after the way the fish are handled that they have any form of a long term survival rate as well as return to their original haunts. I have witnessed the demise first hand. I have also seen the same effect with Walleye tournaments on some compounds in the midwest. I am sorry if I offend the tournament fisherman, nice folks or otherwise, but tournaments do nothing but destroy fisheries. Of course marinas and bait shops and resorts love them because of the MONEY they bring in. So sad. So when it comes to the "modern bass fisherman" and the true love of catching bass, STOP promoting the tournamnet trails and start promoting fishery and habitat restoration. As for the Stripers, they are a blast if you can catch one.

[emjay]

I was able to land my first and biggest striper ever last year and man I'll tell you, there is no other feeling like it. I was amazed to see stripers come out of Bullshoals and will love to continue doing so. I've also never had trouble pulling bass out of Bullshoals either and you can ask my brother and my friends if they've any troubles either. I've seen more than a few lunkers follow my swimbaits and only wished they would of committed to the bait. This year I have caught some very nice crappies in the 13-15" range so I'm not sure were this hatred of stripers is coming from.

[Stump bumper]

The "hate" for striper's come from bass fisherman on Beaver because Beaver is managed as a trophy striper fishery and people who fish Beaver don't catch as many bass as they do on Table Rock so it must be all the striper's. I used to think that way until I started looking at the facts. One Beaver is not stocked with any more stripers even less than some other lakes in the state it just has a lower limit and longer length limit for keeping fish.

Beaver is smaller than Table Rock with much smaller Rivers running into it but has a very heavy tournament fishery with 2 or 3 tournaments running every weekend and jack pots almost every day of the week. The Bass fisherman(to include myself)don't want to blame our selfs, but you ask anyone there are too many 10in bass on Beaver the shortage is in 15in and bigger fish. If the stripers were to blame, they would eat all those 10inch fish fist. The 15inch and bigger fish a targeted by one and only one predator and that is the Bass fisherman and we either kill them due to deep hooks, not running live wells to save batteries or giving them the bends from pulling them up from 35 to 40 feet in hot months.

Now when you look at Bull shoals they have had walleye much longer than Beaver and the walleye are much more aggressive fish then stripers with a faster growth rate and able to feed in cold enough water that Bass are easy targets, but just like stripers they don't like bass that much.

But to answer your question, that is where the hate comes from, it is a lot easier to blame the fishery than to blame yourself but I for one will stand up and say "My name is John and I am a Beaver Lake Bass fisherman and I am part of the problem not the solution of the short fish on Beaver."

[taxidermist]

Exactly!!! Especially in the spring when bass are on the nest. Way to many tourney, jerk the guarding bass from the nest and run all over the lake then way them in hoping for fish for next year.

Stripers havebeen in Bull Shoals pretty much for the last 30 years and suddenly they eat bass and eat crappie.

Like I said Bulldoes nto produce numbers of large crappie. Go south or east or north and you find larger crappie even with smaller waters but they are shallow waters.

Much of the year in Bull Shoals and other highland res. there is not much oxygen below 30 feet. I have a lot of dives in scuba gear and you dont see many fish int he deeper colder water

The small number of stripers that will be stocked equals to less than one to every three acres at normal power pool level. Look at the huge numbers of shad in the lake,these are the primary food of stripers and yes sometimes other fish species. I have had some great days fishing the pollen drift with shad type lures.

Agasin I need to mention I see some larger crappie, spots and have even caught some good smallies from both Norfork and Bulls, but the large crappie 15 inches and larger are not in the highland res. I do see some large crappie come from Norfork, but I dont fish Norfork like I do Bull Shoals.

A few years back I rediscovered the huge stripers in Bull Shoals and was told I was full of crap by people on this board!! That Bull did not have those big fish.

Well the fish are there!!! and f they continue to stocks a few stripers it will not hurt anything as it has been proven they dont eat the bass in any significant numbers.