Stop Planting Invasives!

[fishinwrench]

1 hour ago, BilletHead said:

            Interesting that Stockton was impounded in 1969. Hybrids started being stocked first in 2014 in Northwest Missouri Lakes. Just when in your conspiracy theories did that get contaminated with mutts?  I fish there often but hey I have no idea whether they are pure or not?  

I haven't the foggiest idea.   Lake O had stockings of them way earlier than that.  

I never would have noticed, had I not gotten totally consumed with catching whites on the fly, and got really intimate with them for over a decade (Spring -Summer & Fall).   Started noticing something different with some of the "Whites" I was catching......Then sat on the bridge and high banks for hours at a time watching big hybrids join right in on the spawning whirlygigs during the Spring runs.   

If You've never actually sat and watched them when they are actually in the act of spawning you're missing out, because it's the craziest thing you've ever seen.   

Probably everyone has seen a couple of whites wallering around on the surface..... but that's just foreplay.    When the REAL BUSINESS happens there will be 4-6 males repeatedly body-slamming a female, sometimes knocking her clear out of the water, until she squirts......and then you'll see a cloud of jizz as big as the hood of your truck come from all those male whites.....and whatever hybrids are joining in on the gang bang.      

It's enough to make you go home and immediately rip the clothes off your wife!!!   😂 And that's what you might as well go do, because you aren't gonna catch any fish.    If you are catching some.....then they either AREN'T spawning yet......or they've already spawned.

[BilletHead]

58 minutes ago, Flysmallie said:

I can’t say that I haven’t caught one, but I can 100% say that I haven’t cared. But if one of the ways to tell is that they die easily, then I have 100% for sure never put one on a stringer. 
 

Like a lot of things up there, I think the problem is confined to LOZ. 

Probably boils down to something environmental.  

[fishinwrench]

5 minutes ago, BilletHead said:

Probably boils down to something environmental.  

Maybe, who knows?    I've only actually seen it here in the Gravois arm of LO.   I just assume it happens anywhere and everywhere hybrids are in the mix. 

I can't imagine why it wouldn't.

[BilletHead]

5 minutes ago, fishinwrench said:

Maybe, who knows?    I've only actually seen it here in the Gravois arm of LO.   I just assume it happens anywhere and everywhere hybrids are in the mix. 

I can't imagine why it wouldn't.

            Let me throw this at you Glen. I am sure just like in humans there are birth anomalies in fish. What is the numbers you are seeing? One in ten? One in 100? on and on. I read where one in 700 babies are born with Down syndrome. IMO that is a bunch of children. That is not including other disorders.  Enviromental the cause?  We both know how prolific fish are and whites are most likely on top of that list, and I am sure they have birth defects too. Some survive some don't because of the environment they live in. No one is nurturing those baby fish but the sheer numbers that can be affected and show up on your net. 

[tjm]

What I read about wipers recrossing with whites is that the hybrids have reduced fertility as compared to the whites, so if the males involved where half hybrids and half whites the fry would still  have a better chance of being pure than of being a recross, but it's still more "mutts" than we need. I'd have to guess the number of hybrid males is far less than that of pure whites at any spawning situation though. It would make some kid a great thesis theme to determine percentages of recrosses in the population though and examine DNA to see how those genes are being recombined.

[fishinwrench]

13 minutes ago, BilletHead said:

            Let me throw this at you Glen. I am sure just like in humans there are birth anomalies in fish. What is the numbers you are seeing? One in ten? One in 100? on and on. I read where one in 700 babies are born with Down syndrome. IMO that is a bunch of children. That is not including other disorders.  Enviromental the cause?  We both know how prolific fish are and whites are most likely on top of that list, and I am sure they have birth defects too. Some survive some don't because of the environment they live in. No one is nurturing those baby fish but the sheer numbers that can be affected and show up on your net. 

I never really kept count.  Some days I'll catch 8-10 of them, some days only 1-2, and then I might go weeks without catching one.   I definitely catch more out on the flats in the Summer & Fall than I catch up in the creeks during the Spring.  

It's not just a birth defect, they are a definite crossbreed.  

[Al Agnew]

Another unbelievably stupid species MDC pushed back in the day is multiflora rose.  The land we just sold was thick with it.  Had no bush honeysuckle or bradford pears, but that multiflora rose was evil.  The land we just bought and live on now has quite a bit of bush honeysuckle close to the road, but hardly any multiflora rose.  Gonna have to do battle with the bush honeysuckle.