I have several private owned strip mine lakes that i fish and i have been working on improving the fish habitats in these lakes. Im lucky that the land owner has given me the go ahead to do as i please in improving these lakes. Not to mention he has provided a small track hoe and several hundred gallons of deisel to help me out.

Some of the pits i have dropped the water levels five to six feet to allow shoreline vegetation to get better established and ive also planted plots of willows onto these shorelines. When all this vegetation gets a good three or four year foot hold i plan on raising the water levels back up to the previous height to provide cover for newly hatched frye.

The past couple years we had some high winds that have left quite a few small barns and storage sheds flipped over and blown off their foundations. On the lakes where the water levels cant be dropped as easily i have used recycled wood and built several dozen rabbit hutch style "frye shelters" that are 4.0 feet wide x 4.0 feet tall x 10.0 feet long that i have filled with hard wood tree top brush and floated with pvc pipe and have anchored them in shallow grassy areas. Smaller size fish can get through the wire where the larger fish cant get through to eat them.

My primary question is i wonder that due to the fact these lakes are privately owned would it be lawfull for me to toss all the largemouth smaller than 16 inches up onto the banks or to give them to someone wanting smaller fish to stock their farm ponds. The way i see it is the removing of fish under 16.0 inch should allow the larger fish to more sucessfully spawn and establish more of a trophy size fish population in these strip pit lakes.

Has anyone had any experience in doing this? And if so what long term results did you have?

I got several floating goose islands built and i am looking to buy more 55 gallon plastic barrels in the Hopkins and Muhlenburgh County Areas.