Indiana > Ice Fishing Indiana
Kuhn
kevs:
If a person thinks a lake can bounce back in a couple years take a look at Diamond lake by Ligonier. Word got out about the smallies and crappie years past and that lake got pounded. Couldn't find a place to park when there was a time one wouldn't see another boat on the lake besides those who resided there. Fished it two years past with a nephew and still not the same.
R.S.:
true that kevs. but diamond lk is only 79 acres and your talking crappie. large crappie can be wiped out by loose lips. especially on sites like this and FB! and they already have a 25 limit. even that cant save them from a hoard of hundreds of "spot snipers".
bigger lakes and gills aren't as vulnerable. pressure can still lower numbers. they should bounce back with all the spawning they do. gill limit is not needed here imo. i hear people talk about gill limits on here that hardly even fish. if they got out and actually fished they would find a bounty of large gills n our state. you just have to put in the effort to find the lakes that are producing. you cant just lurk on here and expect to go cash in on someone else's hard work and time put into finding them for you. most have learned that lesson, or read about it on here already.
kevs:
RS I believe it is more of a lake by lake basis. State/DNR should bring back creel surveys and let college students do it for credits or grades. Not enough being done now to monitor what is being harvested from the lakes and rivers. Around 1978 there was a fish kill in the St Marys river in the Fort. I can remember peoples disbelief at the number of, size and type of fish that were visible after dying. Nobody knew all those fish existed in the river. I think its that way in many lakes.
R.S.:
yes i agree to that also. different types of lakes reproduce at different rates. some of our lakes are very fertile and produce tens od thousands of harvested gills every year without a hitch. other more infertile lakes seem more void of mass populations. they tend to be very deep clear and rocky. whereas the fertile lakes are more shallow and weedy. if they ever do a gill limit it should geared towards those infertile lakes only. not many of those i can think of though.
angler surveys arent a good way to tell whats been taken. most people will either over exaggerate or under exaggerate what they caught. be like going off the info from a bait shop. most people are smarter than to spill the beans on their honey hole to a bait shop or taxidermist. surveyors aren't there 24hr a day either. at night thousands of crappie are pulled from out waters that would never get included.
your also spot on that most people dont have a clue to what swims in our waters. way more fish out there than most can imagine! i hear the gill limit preached about by angler that only fish a few dozen times a year. what do they know. ::) i know old timers that harvest upwards of 4-5 thousand gills a year. (and thats conservative(oops hope i can use that word on here) ;D guesstimate ) they sure dont see a lack of harvestable fish.
Michigan Slim:
Elkhart did some electroshocking on the Saint Joseph in the late 90's when I worked for the city. I couldn't believe the size and number of fish they brought out of that river. The biologist even found a brook trout stream!
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