Thread: Sayers Lake

Originally Posted by DJD3

It may not happen. I'm not a fish biologist, but have read that fish size is relative to the size of the lake, and ratio of bait. Basically, it's lilke fish in a tank. They only grow as big as their environment will support. There may be too many fish in that lake. I may be wrong on all of this, but have read many times about the growth of fish.

eNaturalist: Grow-Grow-Grow

I've read much the same, DJ. I have seen bass enhancement work on a lake, but I haven't really seen it working for panfish. It just seems like when a lake produces some good size panfish, it will continue to do so as long as it's not overharvested.

Maybe I'll have to spend more time on those more productive western PA lakes everyone in this group is always bragging about!

Several Lakes in our state of PA have the same issue, too many crappie, not enough predator fish, and not nearly enough bait fish. They tend to become a bit of a pain in the neck. The state would be better off stocking emerald shiners and rainbow smelt, rather than putting size restrictions on many of these lakes. Once you get the mean size up in the lake, then you could apply the enhancement regulation. Better than an size restriction would be a creel restriction. Another thing that hurts the size of the fish is over population, it is in direct alignment with feed. You want our fisheries to get better, we need to come together as anglers and push for some of these changes to be made. The thing that would cause the greatest change in size vs population would be to introduce and sustain a great bait fish population. You have great feed, good number of predators, and good cover....you'll see your crappie grow in size.

Have to disagree on the baitfish introduction. The predator fish are the safest answer to the problem. Increase their numbers like shenango lake has done and you'll get better results than introducing baitfish that will compete with the fry for food. Stripers, northern pike, catfish, and walleyes will get the population in check in a few years time. Might even be the big bass regulation they introduced a while back. We're seeing the results now. Lots of good size crappies. Now if they can find a way to grow the bluegills bigger.

I'm with you on the bigger blue gills......I love those tasty little buggers.