REALLY?

[Riverwhy]

Winning weight in last weeks crappie tournament was over eight pounds. Several others in the 7s.

[mjk86]

So you know what they earn, but not what they have to say about the steadily declining angler success rate at MT ?

BTW, You forgot to add in a fresh vehicle every other year and fuel/maintenance card with no limit, plus many other perks. They do way better than you make it sound

Yes precisely, actually IDK exactly what they earn...but i do know that an entry level chemist will make about 35k a year, I cant imagine a biologist of the same education level makes much more than that. Sounds like someone has a bone to pick with fisheries biologists. Got an F in science class or something? There are far worse people making way more money than fisheries biologists.

[fishinwrench]

Whatever they make they aren't worth it IMO.

Rick Clunnn agrees.

https://youtu.be/AIrvKOPlFjo

[WeekendWarrior]

MT creeks used to be awesome fishing but lake has changed and now it is more main lake fishing for the bass anyway I believe. Creeks have silted in over the years and fish have changed I think. Have not been up there in several years but know one of the top tourney guys that usually takes a check in bigger tourneys. Just to many other good lakes to fish. MT is definitely a spot specific lake to catch fish on a regular basis but can still produce some very nice bass but like I said there are to many other lakes that I would rather spend my time fishing.

[Boobie]

Hey wrench, in your opinion why did MT go sour. Never fished MT in the early years but did fish it in the last 15.Have caught some nice limits of crappie.

[fishinwrench]

I dunno, I moved from Mexico to Atlanta for work (4 years), and when I came back nothing was the same. It sucked.

At first I thought it was because my head was full of lake Lanier tactics, but all my homeboy buddies told me that it had just diminished as a fishery during that time.

I took that as a challenge and since I was drawing Ga.unemployment and didn't have to work for awhile I set out to show them they were wrong. I fished long and hard in all the best areas of MT but my buddies were right. The bass just weren't there, and the few that were didn't look so good.

I gave up in '89 and moved to LO fulltime, never to go back.

I still talk to my homeboys up there, they are all good fishermen and still hit it fairly regularly, but they say it still isn't "right" and kicks their butt more times than not.

Back in the day there were certain small channel swing coves that we could almost guarantee taking a solid limit from every time.

And the brushy hump at Florida....Oh...My...Gawd! Big bass were all over that thing if you could hit it on a day that the wind wasn't unruly.

You used to be able to pitch a 1/8oz Kastmaster spoon around cedar trees and load the boat with nice crappie all Summer long. We even used to catch limits of big crappie on Bomber 6A crankbaits without even really trying.

[Boobie]

Wow, interesting. Never really bass fished,just after crappie. BEEN ON TRIPS WHERE WE USED TO CATCH SOME REALLY NICE SLABS. Last 5 years lots of small ones.

[Jerry Rapp]

like FW, I fished MT a lot in the late 80s and 90's. Won my first "big" tournament there. a Bass World night event. We had 24 lbs or so, 6 fish. We would be bass fishing in late April and May, and catch a big crappie flipping for bass. We would immediately put down the flipping rods and pull out the spinning rods and more times than not would boat a limit of slab crappie in no time. The walleye fishing at dusk on that Florida hump could be outstanding. As most lakes do, the fishing started to decline 10 to 12 years after impoundment, but when it started declining, it was like it went over Niagara Falls. I always felt that there were so many crappie fishermen, that they not only kept all the crappie once they reached 9 inches, but any bass that was even close to 15 inches would get the knife too. The crappie pressure got to be so intense that you couldn't even bass fish down a bank because of all the boats tied to the timber drowning minnows.

[dtrs5kprs]

like FW, I fished MT a lot in the late 80s and 90's. Won my first "big" tournament there. a Bass World night event. We had 24 lbs or so, 6 fish. We would be bass fishing in late April and May, and catch a big crappie flipping for bass. We would immediately put down the flipping rods and pull out the spinning rods and more times than not would boat a limit of slab crappie in no time. The walleye fishing at dusk on that Florida hump could be outstanding. As most lakes do, the fishing started to decline 10 to 12 years after impoundment, but when it started declining, it was like it went over Niagara Falls. I always felt that there were so many crappie fishermen, that they not only kept all the crappie once they reached 9 inches, but any bass that was even close to 15 inches would get the knife too. The crappie pressure got to be so intense that you couldn't even bass fish down a bank because of all the boats tied to the timber drowning minnows.

Think Jerry is on to at least part of it. We used to come down and fish it from Des Moines occasionally, back in the early 90's. My guess would be a combination of the meat fishing Jerry described (hate to say it, but it is a country boy lake), and the crazy pool fluctuations.

Really not a big lake either. Folks used to call it a mini Truman, but even Truman did not age well for all its size.

[fishinwrench]

When MT was being impounded the "story" going around was that they (whoever THEY was) heavily stocked all the little pits and ponds that would eventually be flooded. Now that I'm older/wiser I know that was a crock of s#it, but it was amazing that only a few years after it reached full pool that lake was FULL of nice sized fish.

The only arms of that watershed that had truly decent bass populations before the lake was made were the Middle and Elk forks, and there is just no way that they held enough fish to populate that entire expanse of new water. So where all those fish came from in the early days is a mystery to me.

The South fork was heavily contaminated from fire-brick waste and raw sewage (Thanks to AP Green and the city of Mexico) and nothing lived in it but bullfrogs, crawdads and mosquitos, and the North fork was a muddy farm runoff ditch full of turtles and bullheads.