YOU TALK ABOUT PRESSURE ON A LAKE!

[merc1997 Bo]

41 minutes ago, MOPanfisher said:

sampling of populations

do you actually have any data on when and where the mdc did any actual shocking studies on table rock?  what little they have done in the last 20 years is always on the james river arm and that can not tell you what is actually going on lake wide.  next, you hardly ever see a conservation officer working the lake, and not a creel checker either which is important in information gathering.  so, how is it that you manage any lake without first hand knowledge about what is going on?

bo

[MOPanfisher]

I believe the annual reports from MDC have been posted before.  When doing sampling they sample the same locations under as close to the same conditions as are feasible to get a consistent baseline, jumping around and sampling different locations each time will tell you nothing about the population trends. Agents are spread very thin on a lake the size of TR, 4 or so for the whole lake, plus a few hundred thousand acres of land and some rivers and creeks.  I wish they did more of a viable enforcement effort on all lakes as I some we a lot of undersized fish and over limits taken.  For lakes that gets as much pressure as TR and LOZ I sure see a lot of impressive reports.  And those high water years are always a boom for fisheries for the next few years.

https://fishing.mdc.mo.gov/reports/table-rock-lake

 

[merc1997 Bo]

1 hour ago, MOPanfisher said:

I believe the annual reports from MDC have been posted before.  When doing sampling they sample the same locations under as close to the same conditions as are feasible to get a consistent baseline, jumping around and sampling different locations each time will tell you nothing about the population trends. Agents are spread very thin on a lake the size of TR, 4 or so for the whole lake, plus a few hundred thousand acres of land and some rivers and creeks.  I wish they did more of a viable enforcement effort on all lakes as I some we a lot of undersized fish and over limits taken.  For lakes that gets as much pressure as TR and LOZ I sure see a lot of impressive reports.  And those high water years are always a boom for fisheries for the next few years.

https://fishing.mdc.mo.gov/reports/table-rock-lake

 

so, explain how sampling the same area of a lake tells what is going on lake wide????  that would be like having 10 ponds on a 100 acre tract and only sample one and base the other nine's health off of that one pond.  that is just a lazy way to do business, and a bad one.  that is like saying that your car can not be running badly because i just checked one yesterday just like it, and it was running fine.  you need to do a lake wide sampling at basically the same time for a number of years in a row to tell what the real pulse of the lake is.  also doing creel surveys at different times of the year lake wide tells lots of info.  i can tell you that the fish population in the james river arm is a far different survey that the eagle rock area would reveal.  i can tell you that table rock does not have any where near the bass in it as it did pre-fish kill.  it has taken over 20 years to get to where we are at now, and the fact is, with stocking, we could have been at this level in 5 years.  

since we are the subject of how thin the mdc personnel is, where is all the tax dollars being spent they collect off of sales tax???  they have bought up a lot of land that is no longer on the tax rolls, and then scream they have no money.  since personnel is as thin as you say, they are not spending money there.  they do spend some money around the city areas, but never down this way.  kind of like stocking quail up north, but not in this area.  we like to quail hunt here too.

bo

[bferg]

I am not a tournament guy and I am not a fan of how many tournaments these lakes host.  Mainly I can't stand everyone thinking they are KVD.  

But:  a healthy fishing industry creates healthier fisheries.  It generates more money and more people who care and have a voice.  You might not like what MDC or AGF does today but can you imagine how bad it would be if there were not passionate fisherman engaged and caring about management?

I wish the tournaments would do more to help increase spawn success and decrease mortality rates (which I understand are low already as a percentage but there are so many tournaments the absolute numbers become meaningful).  Perhaps a catch and immediate release season only during the spawn or prohibiting tournaments when water temps reach a certain level in summer would be a balanced approach.

The tournaments need to better leverage technology too...  there is absolutely no reason people need to put fish in a livewell and slosh them around all day then go through the weigh in process to have a tournament.  Internet access and smart phones provide a new way to do tournaments at little cost if anyone really wanted to.

[176champion]

Missouri has trout farms all over the place, why can't they has some bass farms? bass fishing seems to bring in more tourist, more tourist more money for the local economy, kind of a win win.

[mixermarkb]

+1 on a bass stocking program. The lakes, and places like the Meremac River in the St. Louis metro area would benefit from this! 

[fishinwrench]

Messages regarding the potentially excessive relocating of bass have been sent to those who get paid to know such things. It was asked that IF (by chance) the current level of bass relocation posed no problem whatsoever, then what level would?   Would having 5 times more tournaments be a problem? 10 times more?   If it can't be regulated now, then when?  Can it ever?

As of yet there has been no reply at all. 

Seems to me that this is a topic that nobody wants to step in, for fear of being quoted.   

You can ask just about anything else and receive a polite and thoughtful reply within 48 hours.  They'll talk your ear off about Walleye stocking, Striper reproduction, Spoonbill breeding, Gizzard and Threadfin shad spawns, ect. But they don't seem to want to discuss the potential effects of too many tournaments and/or the constant relocating of Bass. What do ya reckon they are afraid of ?  

If their "studies" indicate no negative effect caused from constantly relocating wildlife then I'd kinda like to start hosting some cottonmouth and copperhead roundups 24 times per month with the official weigh-in and release right in front of my ex wife's house. ???  

Heck I'd even settle for rats and field mice.  Can I get a permit for a rodent tournament team trail ? 

[vernon]

That's about as well stated as it gets!

I've mentioned here before that most of my paid adult life was spent working for the federal government and even had seven years in city government. One of "our" favorite things to do was to solicit public input and dissenting views. Made us feel good about ourselves and helped to reassure us that we were indeed objective and free thinkers.

That is, right up until we actually received some. 

Then it was time to deflect or flat out ignore the issue in hopes that they would go away or (the personal favorite of any good  bureaucrat) hope that they give up entirely and then go away. 

The deflection aspect was usually changing the subject to something we really were good at or proud of (not necessarily the same thing) such as walleye, stripers, spoonbill, etc.

In fairness to the folks you're referring to though, they are typically one or all of the following - understaffed, overworked, undertrained or unqualified in the particular area of expertise.  In fact, quite often the "answer" doesn't even exist or they haven't been provided the wherewithal to find out what it is.

Nonetheless, they're now caught in a tight spot and are desperately struggling to escape, dignity be danged.

Having been "that guy" more times than I care to admit, I sometimes would quote the philosopher Mr. T, who poignantly stated  "I pity the fool."

I apologize for the fact that this in no way helps to answer the question at hand but hope the insight into the process somehow lends perspective to your frustration. 

In others words, there's most likely no answer forthcoming as nobody has any idea what it is. 

[Wesley]

Every year someone complains about the crappie fishing, small fish. Go up the flat creek or james river April roughly 15th. hundreds of boats. thy should shut down crappie fishing the whole month of April up flat creek and James river. Think how big they would be in a couple of years. before the internet if the crappies were not 2 lbs I did not keep them. Now everybody posts where they catch all these fish and than you have 10 boats there the next day. than they complain about the number of people fishing there spot.

[Notropis]

You guys are asking a lot of good questions some of which I can't answer since I haven't studied Table Rock or done much population sampling on it. 

I think I can help with understanding how electrofishing samples are conducted to estimate total fish populations as accurately as possible.  In Arkansas, we went through an extensive evolution in our electrofishing (EF) techniques.  When the first EF samples were conducted in the late 80's we relied on capturing a set number of bass to estimate the population . On lakes the size of Beaver, we were required to capture 250 for each species of bass, weigh and measure each one,  then release them.  We used the catch rates (number of fish caught per hour) to estimate abundance and the lengths and weights to determine population structure (percentage of different sized fish).  As we progressed with our methods and began to apply statistical analysis to our numbers, it became apparent that this method was inadequate for several reasons.  Many biologists were picking out the best areas and habitat to sample to capture the minimal number of fish required in the shortest time since many of them had large numbers of lakes to sample each Spring during a set water temperature window.  This "selective area" sampling was biased in that it would paint too rosy of a picture in catch rates and to a lesser extent population structure.  Realizing this we looked at what other states were doing and utilized techniques of statistical analysis to adapt our EF techniques to better reflect and estimate total fish populations.  We did this by dividing the large lakes into different zones and used multiple randomly generated sample sites in each zone utilizing GPS and computers to randomly select sample sites.  We also increased the number of total sample sites dramatically from 6-10 per lake, to 40-50 per lake.  We did reduce the sample time from 30 minutes to 10 minutes per site but still increased our total time sampling.  Since the sites were randomly chosen, they were a more accurate representation of all types of habitat (the good and the bad).  We put in a lot of long nights accomplishing this but it was worth it to have information that was far more accurate and more valid statistically.   Our catch rates went down since we were no longer going to the best areas *honey holes" but they were a lot closer to the reality of what the population was.

It's a complicated process and certainly not perfect but I believe, a lot more accurate than the other methods we were using.  I'm not sure what the protocol for EF samples are in Missouri and you would need to check with them to find out.

Hope this was helpful!