The question of forage

[MoCarp]

I have been doing a great deal of research of late on how to increase productivity on our area lakes...

if anyone knows of benthic studies or planktonic work done in our area feel free to share

I did come across the issues with Mysis shrimp in western/ mountain states that might bode well for Taney, one issue with the shrimp is they stay very deep, out of typical trouts forage options yet deep water fish’s like lakers and whitefish gorge on them...rivers below hydro dams have some monsters because of the shrimp getting passed through like shad do here at times....un checked mysis will feed on Daphnia, and I suspect scuds but they considerably are bigger than daphnia something to be studied...yet the vast depths of TR could shovel food into Taney....

glass or ghost shrimp are in our area, I have collected them at the Busch WMA, unsure if any ever have been in the white river chain of lakes...these are detritus feeders....the interesting part of my research is that when and how big forage is goes a long way in producing better sized fish.....Stockton used to have some nice mayfly hatches.......all of these things are important to fish communities, well placed management like the introduction of scuds to Taney can be game changers...source point pollution ( golf courses are noted offenders) can crash the bottom of a food chain with a simple insecticide application followed by a heavy rain....politically I’m sure it’s a hot potato yet we all would like bigger better fishing...