Thread: After the Spawn

I was told by a game warden one time about 10-15% make it.

Thanks for the feedback, I was thinking it might have been about 20%.

It would seem a lot would depend upon the conditions. Like right now with extra high water probably more will survive because there's more places for them to hide , on years of low-water where they probably have to spawn pretty much on the mud bank I'm sure the survival rate is extremely low because of the less places for them to hide from predators.

I agree with allison

The real truth is way less than 1% make it to 8", according to the game doctors. A few females can lay thousands of eggs.

A lot get eaten as fry. All fish target the fry of the year. If a body of water is short on adequate cover for them to hide or short on other food sources a lot are lost to predation. Some bodies of water have problems just because they do not have adequate cover for the fry and juvenile fish and inadequate numbers of other food sources...so the fry get hammered. Also a lot of predation of eggs in waters with a lot of small sunfishes and other fish that will steal eggs from the nest.