Quote Originally Posted by bocajemma View Post
the subject of a slot limit has been beat to death. there are 20+ million walleye in lake erie currently which produces trillions of eggs to be fertilized. The lake has changed from years ago and may not be able to sustain 40+ milliion walleye. The reality is, it may require fewer walleye in the lake to produce a banner hatch. Fewer walleye = more available food = higher survival rate. I believe the survival rate of the fry is the real issue at hand. Everyone thinks immediately that if you have more walleye, you have more fry, and you have more survival when you can actually decrease the survival rate with more fry if there isn't available forage to sustain the fry. Many factors involved here with the least significant factor being the amount of walleye currently in the lake.
You make a good point, but I have to respectfully disagree. The reason that you think that the slot limit issue has been beat to death is because it is the common sense approach. I have seen too many issues "muddied up" by political pressure. Like it or not, these issues are decided by those that likely have something to lose by instituting a slot limit.

I have not seen any studies that suggest that there is not enough forage for the fry. In fact, proving that would be pretty much impossible. (If you have seen one, please point me in that direction and I am willing to change my opinion.) With that said, it becomes a math problem. 100 fry born with a 5% survival rate = 5 surviving, 200 fry born with the same survival rate = 10 surviving.

At the risk of sounding overly simplistic (really just a common sense type of guy), the lake had a healthy population of walleye prior to the huge explosion of sport and commercial fishing a several decades back. Sport fishing has declined since, but commercial fishing has not.

While I will accept in truth that run-off nutrients helps the fry to grow bigger and faster, I will not accept the idea that more walleye breeding will equate to less fry surviving.