FLW Lake Cumberland

[Les Young]

In reference to the results of the USA Bassin weights I spoke directly to the KDFW biologist about the health of bass in GRL. There is a direct effect to the reason why the bass populations is more healthy than it has ever been and to my surprise it is also the same reason white bass are struggling...Alwives...It seems that several years ago someone introduced alwives to Green River Lake. They are not native to the lake so it is speculated that someone who was live bait fishing introduced them. This is the exact reason why it is illegal to catch live bait from one body of water and use them in another body of water. This is also why stores who sell live bait can only buy bait from vendors who are registered and certified to sell only specific types of minnows.

Alwives roam in open deep water. They have more protein than the shad that are already present in the lake. This is the reason why 15 years ago you rarely heard of multiple fish in a tournament over 6 pounds and 20 lb bags were only caught in a brief window in the spring. Now its not that rare to have multiple big bags and multiple big fish. It's not easy but it's not as rare as it was several years ago. Now as for the white bass their habits are totally different and the alwives effect them in a negative way. White bass make a run in the spring to find current to lay their eggs. They do not make a nest in calm water and have a male guard it like LM,SM or Spots. They lay in current and the male will fertilize the eggs as they turn over in current. Once the white bass spawn all the fingerlings migrate back to the main lake and here is where the alwives cause them problems. It is a two fold problem...large alwives will feed on fingerling white bass because they are occupying the same space in the water column. Fingerling alwives feed on the same plankton that fingerling white bass white bass feed on. This is why the white bass population on green has been so poor for the last several years. The white bass population actually got so low that KDFW stocked them 3 years in a row not long ago. It was within the last 5-6 years if my memory is correct.

Now that the biologist explained it to me and I reflect back I can see exactly what he was talking about. I remember in the 80's,90's and early 2000's having a huge white bass run. Then around 15 or so years ago it started to diminish and within the last 7-8 years it has really been slow. Also looking back I remember bass fishing in the late 90's and early 2000's and remember when just catching a limit would get you a check. I remember fishing the Green River Bass club early 2000's. The AOY was always won by someone who did not zero a tournament at green. Teams would have fish at Barren,Cumberland and Nolin but it was the team who did not blank at their home lake of green who won AOY. I don't recall the exact year but I am thinking 2002 ish I specifically remember Rodger and Dwight (the tournament directors at the time) saying this was the first year there were multiple anglers who weighed in fish every tournament. Now you had better have a limit and have 2-3 good fish and the others need to be solid fish on Green. The days of cashing a check with a small limit are just not there anymore. Anyways it was a few years after that green started to really improve with the bass catch and really started to decline with the white bass catch. This was all due to the introduction of alwives. If you're hesitant to believe this theory then name me a lake that has alwives and it also has a healthy population of white bass. They may have white bass but not large numbers. The KDFW biologists I spoke to was really a nice person and opened my eyes to how one thing can totally have different effects on two similar things. If your interested in learning about your local water I highly recommend talking to you local fishery biologist. He told me it's not often that he gets to interact directly with the fisherman so the conversation was welcomed buy him.

All lakes go in cycles for one reason or another. I remember when people would drive right by Green and go to Barren. Now Green puts out better numbers than Barren and you have a few people who have migrated over to fishing Green. Look at Cumberland for an example. The draw down for several years allowed the brush to grow on the bank and now we are seeing a better and more healthy population of bass. Mother nature and humans have a way of impacting things. We have to rely on the KDFW to regulate things to keep it in check. What happened at Cumberland was they sold out the fishery for tourism and mask it by saying it was for a mortality study. You will have a had time convincing me otherwise.

I can very plainly remember catching the sh*t out of white bass on cumberland in the 80s. It was claimed that striper were released that were a carrier of some virus that about wiped out the whites, but the striper were immune to. This was also the time of a lot bigger stripers on cumberland & also the time that striper fishermen were blamed for the alwives. Your post makes perfect sense to me.

[rickhise]

Surprised the size limit can be changed
Any entrants care to confirm

I wasn’t aware.

Maybe Ky Afield can expand on the issue

[stripernut1]

If you want a firestorm, start talking about fishing tournament fishing during spawning season. Biologists say studies have proven it “doesn’t SEEM to harm the bass population.” But if anyone has a lick of common sense, you know if you take a female bass off her nest, or even before she spawns, it causes stress. What happens when you disturb a turkey nest, she leaves her nest and her eggs. A female bass will leave her nest 70”% of the time, IF she is release farther than 50 yards of her nest. Now if you take her down the lake a few miles after being in the well all day, jerk her out of the well and put her in a bag, jerk her back out and hold her up for all to see, maybe in the process breaking her jaw, and then dumping her out, I doubt she will spawn, if she survives. Anyone with any common sense at all knows this is true regardless of what kinds of studies are done. Do we really need to kill our big green and brown fish, just to feed one’s arrogance and ego? I don’t think so. Wait until the “Big Heads” come the Cumberland. Count your blessings everyone.

Now lets talk about studies. I have biology degree and when I was in college years ago, we did fish population studies. One study was done on a three acres private lake. This lake had been stocked for five years without any fishing allowed. After this time, fishing was allowed under moderate pressure. Within two years, the bass population dropped in size and numbers by 52%. The reasons the big bass were taken off the nest and taken home. Another study was done in an old rock quarry filled with 9 to 11 inch average size bluegill. Within two years, the average size and numbers dropped by 43% because the big females were taken off the nest and taken home.

In closing, why can’t you tournament guys SIMPLY catch, weight and release on point of catch, and MAYBE the big girl will find her bed again. How simple is that. It being done in some tournaments now.

Bonefish

thank you for the insightful, educated post, i couldnt agree more

[Gambler3.0]

I fished the Mountain Division as a Co-Angler for a couple seasons a few years back. After fishing a few tournaments I was starting to see tournament fishing in a different light. You know, the parts they don't show on TV.
The final tournament I took part in was an unseasonably hot day (low 90's) at the end of June. After weighing my fish I took them down the hill to the release tank where I saw numerous 4 to 6 lb green fish belly up or close to it. Those fish never had chance. Bounced around in a live well all day then waiting in plastic bag then dumped into laundry basket for weighing then back into the bag then to a kiddie pool. Just didn't seem worth it to me anymore. I have never fished another tournament and have no plans to do so.

[stripernut1]

Thanks for your post, yours is a firsthand account of interaction with a kdfwr representative that details and exposes how simple they must really think we are. Each and every one of your arguments proves this "mortality study" is total fertilizer. like you i wondered why this time of year, you could keep a fish alive in a 5 gallon bucket all day long right now, so the end result data that tournaments have very little impact on a fishery due to mortality is so misleading it would be comical if it wasnt so dangerous. Also i wonder why would they do a mortality study on a class of fish that is ILLEGAL to retain in the first place, in other words there should NEVER be any mortality on 12 inch fish that are kept in a livewell on lake cumberland, they should never be in a livewell to begin with......so WOW, i smell fertilizer again.
Just for common sense sake lets think about something else, why doesnt kdfwr just have these contestants fill out a survey questionere that details what they caught, size etc etc. it would seem to be a more complete harvest of data.

lets just go ahead and "out" the true intent of this size limit exemption, there was a lot of complaining and whining after last years cumberland event on how disappointing it was for the weigh in circus to see so few limits come to the scales.

big bags of big fish sell lures, rods, reels etc etc.

once again thank you for sharing your experience

[R19]

During the conversation with the actual person whom I talked to from KDFW I could tell by the things he said that he did in fact agree with me 100%. However as a KDFW employee he was not going to come out and point blank say yes this was done to generate money for the local economy but you can just tell when someone agrees but they can't say so. Our conversation was very in depth about various different things. In fact we were on the phone for about 1 hour. He was very nice and answered all the questions I had as best as he could. We spoke indepth about alwives,LM,SM,Spots,white bass, spawning bass,Green River Lake,Lake Cumberland and Barren River Lake along with many things associated with fishing.

The prime example I gave him about fish mortality was the Trition owners tournament at KY Lake about 3 or so years ago. This would have been a perfect time to do a delayed mortality study. If my memory is correct it was early or mid June. Bass were pretty much done with the spawn and were at the peak of their highest stress (post spawn). I think the water temps was in the 70's and possibly rose to 80 because the weather was abnormally more warm than usual. Anyways there was several boats in the tournament. I don't recall the exact number but I think 200 would be a safe estimate. Several and when I say several I remember seeing pictures on facebook of like 100 or more dead bass floating at the ramp from which they had the weigh in. Most of the fish were 3-5 lb fish. There were a few smaller ones but the majority were decent size. I am almost positive people released them thinking when they swam off it would be okay but for a couple days after the tournament floaters started popping up everywhere. The instance I am talking about is not what you typically see because it was a "perfect storm" for bad things to happen. The water had jumped several degrees in a short period, the dissolved O2 level was low and the fish were stressed from post spawn, hence the perfect storm for dead bass. Now I understand KDFW can not look at the weather and make an instant snap decision to show up and say we want to study the bass for delayed mortality but surely they are smart enough to realize that water with temps below 60*is not prime conditions to have a large die off.

He agreed 100% with me that the Trition owners tournament I am talking about would have been an excellent time to conduct a delayed mortality study. If your going to do a study then do it when the condition reflects the most impact so you can see what the worst case scenario is. I still have his phone number and he also emailed me so I have his email address. I think I will give it a few weeks and contact him and see if he can release the information from the study that was done...and when I say study I am talking mortality not economic. LOL

[waterdog101]

I don’t think the size should be changed, but if they are going to hold a spring tournament on Cumberland, like they do on lakes all over the country, wouldn’t it be best to weigh 12’’ fish than larger size spawning fish, what number of boats would be entered in a tournament like this, maybe a 100 or 150 boats, once a year, if they all weighed in 5 fish, your looking at 750 short fish loss even if they all die, for a lake the size of Cumberland with 60,000 surface acres, that many fish wouldn’t be a drop in the bucket, I would think the striper would eat more 12’’ bass than that in one day.

[stripernut1]

I don’t think the size should be changed, but if they are going to hold a spring tournament on Cumberland, like they do on lakes all over the country, wouldn’t it be best to weigh 12’’ fish than larger size spawning fish, what number of boats would be entered in a tournament like this, maybe a 100 or 150 boats, once a year, if they all weighed in 5 fish, your looking at 750 short fish loss even if they all die, for a lake the size of Cumberland with 60,000 surface acres, that many fish wouldn’t be a drop in the bucket, I would think the striper would eat more 12’’ bass than that in one day.

im really not arguing fish mortality here, my main argument is pulling hundreds of bass off the nest on one en of the lake and transporting them to the complete other end of the lake and releasing them. if this activity was sustained over time i dont see how it can be good in the long run. but hey this is tournament fishing , its legal, it happens and the fish are still here in spite of it all.
as far as the stripers eating bass, i am fortunate to be able to clean a bunch of stripers every year for over 30 years now, i cut the stomachs open on every striper to see what size shad they are eating. ive seen a lot of big bluegill, 1 crappie that i can remember, and i can count on one hand the number of ky bass ive seen in a stripers stomach, and they were tiny. not saying it doesnt happen but its a non factor

[Bobby Headrick]

I would like to see all Tourneys go to a MLF style system. With today's technology, which, there should be no reason to have live weigh ins. We understand that the crowd want to see fish, but do you have to bring in the fish. Record the catch,weight, etc, record it all, if one can afford to have two to four $4000 graph you can get a go pro. There is way too much pressure from all aspects put on our fishery's It needs to be corrected while it still can.

[redearhoosier]

Catfish are great to eat. If they taste like mud, you are fishing bad waters. The catfish down here at the Twin Lakes are excellent, especially the smaller ones.

[Rob1678]

I have tried catfish from all over the state. Truly Ky lake, dale, green,cedar, Ky river, barren, cland, guist creek! My dad loved them and we camped and had to catch enough for a fish fry. Even ate a carp when the fishing was terrible which was better than the catfish. Just not my table fare so I am strictly catch and release for bass and cats!

[Fntsyfbgod]

Catching a few spawning smallmouth out of a lake that size won't make an impact. If they were fishing a smaller lake it might affect the spawn but not a big lake. Florida has been allowing big national tournaments to get tournament exemptions for years and it hasn't been an issue. I don't think every little tournament should get an exemption but I think it's a great idea on big lakes with tournaments that handle fish care properly. I want to showcase our great lakes and that's what the exemption does.