Jizm Lake Happening Prelude.

[Bigassbassman]

Nice!  Looks like you guys had a fun day out there.  Way to thin them out!
Slayer, the perch nuggets look great! Curious, what would you say is your average fillet time on each of those little guys?  
I'm so slow it takes me forever to get through a pile like that.

Shaun and I went a bit further North on Sunday, did plenty of filleting myself. 
Made some fried catfish last night, with a spicy cajun dipping sauce.

[SLAYERFISH]

Nice!  Looks like you guys had a fun day out there.  Way to thin them out!
Slayer, the perch nuggets look great! Curious, what would you say is your average fillet time on each of those little guys?  
I'm so slow it takes me forever to get through a pile like that.

Shaun and I went a bit further North on Sunday, did plenty of filleting myself. 
Made some fried catfish last night, with a spicy cajun dipping sauce.

There's more meat in that pan then my entire 2 days worth!

I can do 40 little perch in 1 hour. From start to ziplock bag!

[Bigassbassman]

Nice, that’s not bad for that many fish! 

[DoctorPerch]

Made my first visit to the Jizm today.  Fished in the dam area, best around 40 feet depth, with fish coming through at 20-25 feet.  Fish were constantly moving around - hard to keep on them.  At times they were so thick, the Marcum registered a false bottom.  All fish were in that 8 to 8.5” range as has been mentioned.  Must have been one great spawn the year they were born.

[SLAYERFISH]

Made my first visit to the Jizm today.  Fished in the dam area, best around 40 feet depth, with fish coming through at 20-25 feet.  Fish were constantly moving around - hard to keep on them.  At times they were so thick, the Marcum registered a false bottom.  All fish were in that 8 to 8.5” range as has been mentioned.  Must have been one great spawn the year they were born.

1st visit ever? 

[JohnnyO19]

Who ya calling Sucker!!

[JohnnyO19]

My final haul, minus a few perch 

[SLAYERFISH]

A Sucky day!


Sucre Bleau-

[DoctorPerch]

1st visit ever?

Yes, Slayer, my first ever visit to the reservoir.  I’ve had lots of excuses over the years for not going, none of them very good.  BTW, while I was there a gentleman stopped by, telling us fishing was good for perch right near the methane holes.  Immediately I thought of your previous years pictures when you did such a thing.  My man-nuggets aren’t big enough to try that!  lol

[Edawg]

They’re still bitin’ up there:)

[da_teacher]

Are there two trails? One easier than the other?

[Edawg]

Da_teacher - nope, only 1 trail. It is pretty easy except for the last 200 yards or so when you climb up the dam to get on the ice.

[SLAYERFISH]

They’re still bitin’ up there:)

A 21 fish limit!  My kind of guy!

[Bigassbassman]

I saw that…close enough.
20 (+/-) 1. 

That place is too long a hike to go back for lunch in your car…

[SLAYERFISH]

Yes it is!

[GSP_Pike]

That’s a BlackJack perch limit. 

[randingo]

Facebook/fishexploder blew that place up.  15 vehicles in the parking lot at 8am

[SLAYERFISH]

Well I guess we'll see if my plan works come next year!

[grababrewski]

That place is too long a hike to go back for lunch in your car…

Bwahahaha! Classic!

[Edawg]

Ha fellas! I realized I couldn’t count after I took the pic and let my last fish go. As an aside, I had 2 floaters pop up into my hole while I was fishing - hope people realize that if you are catching them as deep as I was, 33-36’, most of them aren’t going to survive a release, even if they swim off. Could be a lot of post release mortality happening up there right now…

[SLAYERFISH]

Ha fellas! I realized I couldn’t count after I took the pic and let my last fish go. As an aside, I had 2 floaters pop up into my hole while I was fishing - hope people realize that if you are catching them as deep as I was, 33-36’, most of them aren’t going to survive a release, even if they swim off. Could be a lot of post release mortality happening up there right now…

There will be some mortality!  They need to be thinned out anyhow. 

[DoctorPerch]

Mortality took 20 today - into my fryng pan for tomorrow. They seemed to be a little finicky today but perch eyes were the bait of choice.  Fished in 37 feet of water near dam.

[Crazy Tom]

There will be some mortality!  They need to be thinned out anyhow. 

When you become a fisheries biologist; D maybe when you were busy working, you must did some online classes.

[SLAYERFISH]

Mortality took 20 today - into my fryng pan for tomorrow. They seemed to be a little finicky today but perch eyes were the bait of choice.  Fished in 37 feet of water near dam.

Heck yeah. Ive found its less work to catch them in like 10 ft of water!

[Sleigherfish]

Facebook/fishexploder blew that place up.  15 vehicles in the parking lot at 8am

This thread has +1800 views. YOU guys blew it up. 
I'm glad that lake isn't in my back yard any more, sheesh.

[SLAYERFISH]

This thread has +1800 views. YOU guys blew it up. 
I'm glad that lake isn't in my back yard any more, sheesh.

If you bothered to read the thread you'd realize that we were TRING TO BLOW IT UP!

Hoping to turn a million 7"ers into 200,000 10"ers.

[waterlike]

I think it might be good to define blown up.  15 vehicles.  maybe an avg of 2 people per vehicle?  lets say those 30 people are competent and catch a limit.  so 600 perch MAYBE gone.  only 999,400 perch left in there! Id say that parking lot would have to have 100 vehicles to maybe make a dent.  And thats 100 vehicles a day of every fishable ice day there is during ice season.  So keep going!

[JohnnyO19]

I think it might be good to define blown up.  15 vehicles.  maybe an avg of 2 people per vehicle?  lets say those 30 people are competent and catch a limit.  so 600 perch MAYBE gone.  only 999,400 perch left in there! Id say that parking lot would have to have 100 vehicles to maybe make a dent.  And thats 100 vehicles a day of every fishable ice day there is during ice season.  So keep going!

Yeah, Like Aurora 

[SLAYERFISH]

Yeah, Like Aurora 

I really think lack of recruitment of new perch is the biggest problem at Atown. The lake was drawn down 4 times in the last 5 years in early summer which killed many of the perch eggs.   Last ice season virtually the only year class caught was 12.5". none smaller.

[Bigassbassman]

I think the stunted perch situation at the "blown up lake" has to do with TWO important things:  1)Too many fish  2)Poor lake productivity (food abundance/quality)

Here's an interesting study on Perch population in the sandhill lakes: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1046/j.1365-2400.2001.00278.x
These guys found that "Lake productivity may have more of an influence on yellow perch growth than angler exploitation. Increased growth was associated with increased productivity, which is consistent with other studies."

I'm not sure fishing pressure alone will affect the size of those fish in a huge way.  If you start with 1 million perch, and then 30 dudes caught limits every day this year (600 fish per day), it would only reduce the population by 22%.  You'd still have 781,000 fish by December 2022!  And that's 30 limits EVERY DAY!  There's no way blowing that lake up online will even make a dent this year.

I think increasing macroinvertebrate abundance and introducing a natural predator (such as walleye and/or smallies) would help a bunch, though.   

Yellow perch growth rates depend on "...density-dependence (Headley and Lauer 2008), interspecific competition (Boisclair and Leggett 1989a, 1989b, 1989c; Schoenebeck and Brown 2009), predator abundance (Dembkowski et al. 2017), and prey quality (Lott et al. 1996; Fullhart et al. 2002).
From (https://meridian.allenpress.com/jfwm/article/9/2/486/204590/Population-Characteristics-of-Yellow-Perch-in-a

So, the high number of small fish in this lake suggests 1)Poor predation (since there are TONS of freakin fish); 2)Poor productivity (since there are almost no fish above a certain size threshold).  So I don't think it's really going to get much better with the current fishing pressure alone. 

BUT WE'LL SEE!