Quote Originally Posted by wakina View Post
jonk:

Your post that states it was rare to get one under 20 inches should have been a red flag for future population numbers. With no small fish being caught it should have told you they were absent or non existent and had most likely been consumed by the larger walleyes. All fish in lake Erie start out as a microscopic organism much smaller than 20 inches long and those hogs you related to. Like I said the smelt population had been reduced to a level below what would be needed to sustain such large numbers of large predator fish. Just where would the little ones be that should be in line to replace all of the 20 plus inch fish? You should have been catching some shorts.

Spending large sums of money on raising a few hundred thousand fry to feed the larger walleyes that were present in the lake was a waste of resources. The lake has to balance itself with out artificial help. The lake is to large for a put and take type of management system that works rather well on small by comparison inland lakes. The only help the lake can use efficiently is to stop the pollution and the setting of harvest limits. It has been proven time and time again that if the conditions for the survival of naturally occurring spawned and hatched walleyes is not favorable then those same conditions would be just as devastating to hatchery raised walleyes.
Very well put.

On Lake Michigan (SE WI) we have the same complaints… stock more salmon, stock more salmon so I can get back to catching more. Problem is there is so much less food for them, the can't survive. When you dig into the very deep studies and research that goes into a balanced system, your outlook on will change drastically. I spent a half day reading reports and viewing videos on it all… and have far more respect for the efforts that go into it all now.