Thread: West Boggs Lake Creek Survey.

Sounds like something might need to be done.

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Originally Posted by cevans

DNR did a creel survey this week on West Boggs and a friend of mine watched them, then spoke to them. They were primarily checking size of crappies and only a couple they measured at 12”. All the rest they captured were below 9” and they were quite stunned at this and are considering due to fishing pressure of going to a size limit of 9”. Lake is only 640 acres and when the weather is nice even at this time of the year, it’s nothing to see 20 boats on it fishing with a minimum of 2 people in a boat. If it’s Amish you might see 6. In the summer thru the week nothing to see 50-60 boats thru a weekday with more on weekends not including campgrounds and boats from there. The lake has been hammered past couple of years since re stocking and fishing pressure is taking its toll. Look for a possible change in size limit law this spring for West Boggs. If DNR doesn’t do anything this year, it will really affect what size fish you catch due to fishing pressure. DNR doesn’t control the park, lake, or campgrounds but they do control the fishing.

Let the IDNR biologist figure this out. If all the fish are 9" or so and very few are over 12" let the IDNR do some scale analysis on those fish and figure out the ages of the fish. If the fish are old and still short that tells me that they are not getting enough food. Taking more smaller fish out of the lake will help relieve the overpopulation of small fish. Putting a size limit of 12" won't' help at all. In fact, it would make matters worse.

I fished a lake that was only 180 acres and this is how the IDNR fish biologist controlled the fish population. No size limitations. This lake gets a lot of pressure. One weekend they have 20 boats out there or maybe a few more if you count the trailers on the North Launch ramp with the South Launch ramp. And there are still good crappie being caught.

Single crappie can spawn thousands of fish. So it won't take long to get the numbers of fish up. The problems is food for the crappie. If they don't have enough food to eat their growth slows way down and they get stunted. The solution is to take all the smaller fish out of the lake in order to limit the number of fish so that the number of fish matches the available food supply. Now if you can increase the number of food minnows or somehow get threadfin shad in the water to supply more food to the crappie, then the crappie will grow faster. Longer growing seasons down south are not the only reason they have such big crappie down in Mississippi. They have the smaller threadfin shad which are a great food source for crappie. Threadfin shad don't grow so big like Gizzard Shad. So the don't get too big for the crappie to eat. Up here in Northern IN the water gets too cold for threadfin shad to survive the winter months. But down south or in the Southern sections of rivers there are threadfin shad swimming in the warmer waters.

Lake was drained, poisoned out, the restocked by DNR 3 yrs ago and they let everybody fish it the minute it filled up with not waiting on fish to grow. As far as fertility and food, Several 16 inch bass they brought up cracked 3 lbs with newmerous caught at 4 plus, last year nice 8 to 11 thick blue gills and red ears caught lots, tons of crappie hitting the 12 in mark, You have tons of amish turkey barns, hog & cattle farms and all their drainage is now entering the lake on the north and west side feeding it with their too numerous nutrients where as 10 yrs ago the lake didn’t experience it as explosion growth of Amish buying up farms and moving in. Fishing pressure is culprit. I won’t fish it,,,,just giving a report for those that do.

Originally Posted by cevans

Lake was drained, poisoned out, the restocked by DNR 3 yrs ago and they let everybody fish it the minute it filled up with not waiting on fish to grow. As far as fertility and food, Several 16 inch bass they brought up cracked 3 lbs with newmerous caught at 4 plus, last year nice 8 to 11 thick blue gills and red ears caught lots, tons of crappie hitting the 12 in mark, You have tons of amish turkey barns, hog & cattle farms and all their drainage is now entering the lake on the north and west side feeding it with their too numerous nutrients where as 10 yrs ago the lake didn’t experience it as explosion growth of Amish buying up farms and moving in. Fishing pressure is culprit. I won’t fish it,,,,just giving a report for those that do.

I don't like the way Amish fish, but farming is farming in my book. Seems to me something cropped up years ago concerning the Salamonie due to some Agri Dairy barn pumping refuse?

Lake sucks!

Originally Posted by cevans

Lake was drained, poisoned out, the restocked by DNR 3 yrs ago and they let everybody fish it the minute it filled up with not waiting on fish to grow. As far as fertility and food, Several 16 inch bass they brought up cracked 3 lbs with newmerous caught at 4 plus, last year nice 8 to 11 thick blue gills and red ears caught lots, tons of crappie hitting the 12 in mark, You have tons of amish turkey barns, hog & cattle farms and all their drainage is now entering the lake on the north and west side feeding it with their too numerous nutrients where as 10 yrs ago the lake didn’t experience it as explosion growth of Amish buying up farms and moving in. Fishing pressure is culprit. I won’t fish it,,,,just giving a report for those that do.

Largemouth bass can eat a lot bigger prey fish than crappie. What type of minnows or fish can the crappie feed on. Small crappie eats insects until they turn to a minnow diet when they get bigger. Are there Gizzard Shad in that lake? I doubt that the hold Threadfin shad.

You say that there is a lot of 12" crappie in there. That's different than if there were only smaller 8" crappie. what is the age distribution and size for each age class of crappie? IDNR fishery biologists used to post that information on their web site but I can't find it anymore. I don't intend to fish that lake but am curious.

DNR drained the lake only opening the spillway of the dam as it didn’t completely drain the lake leaving deep water with fish in it when they tried to poison the shad out. Granted it killed a bunch, but didn’t get to the bottom at the deep holes. Shad is back. They put in crappie, Bass, gills, and redear, and cats, but they also saved fish from shocking and netting and put all them back in. Having built a couple of lakes myself and following instructions from fish biologists I always was taught to re stock a lake with a balance of the same year of fish. But, that is the way it was stocked. Right off the bat, those that fished it, caught good fish. And everything in that lake grows fast according to the state biologists due to all the nutrients in the lake. Heck with 24 of the largest turkey barns on the north side water shed with a cattle and hog farm,,,all Amish and thousands of acres of farms and all that on the west side,,all Amish, need I say any more about what is going into the lake? I’m not fishing it or eating the fish out of it. You can. And ther is not a lot of 12” crappie left in the lake.

Originally Posted by cevans

DNR drained the lake only opening the spillway of the dam as it didn’t completely drain the lake leaving deep water with fish in it when they tried to poison the shad out. Granted it killed a bunch, but didn’t get to the bottom at the deep holes. Shad is back. They put in crappie, Bass, gills, and redear, and cats, but they also saved fish from shocking and netting and put all them back in. Having built a couple of lakes myself and following instructions from fish biologists I always was taught to re stock a lake with a balance of the same year of fish. But, that is the way it was stocked. Right off the bat, those that fished it, caught good fish. And everything in that lake grows fast according to the state biologists due to all the nutrients in the lake. Heck with 24 of the largest turkey barns on the north side water shed with a cattle and hog farm,,,all Amish and thousands of acres of farms and all that on the west side,,all Amish, need I say any more about what is going into the lake? I’m not fishing it or eating the fish out of it. You can. And ther is not a lot of 12” crappie left in the lake.

It's hard to get rid of those Gizzard Shad without killing all the other fish in the lake with rotone.