LC striper fishing= management disaster !

[stripernut]

so sick and tired of wading through 15 inch stripers to catch a limit of 24.01 inch keepers ! what has happened ?!!?!?!? i HATE catching throwbacks.....an absolute waste when you consider that half of them are going to sink to the bottom from delayed mortality . and then when you do cathc a keeper it is POOR , straight belly, no shoulders.
the current creel/size structure is NOT working.....a 24 inch 6 lb striper is not a trophy! maybe im just singing the blues abouth the good ol days but c'mon, if we keep doing what we are doing we will keep getting what we have been getting.

does anyone have any ideas ? i have lobbyed with the regional fisheries biologist....place head on brick wall and repeat !

[elnutsmalljaws]

Until they get the dam fixed you will keep placing head on brick wall. All the fish kills these past couple of years has not helped at all. Add in the 568,987 Striper guides on a lake that is 40 feet lower than full pool and good luck. Maybe a completed dam project, full pool and stiffer regulations on Stripers for a couple of years would bring the fishery back to normal but until then I hear the Mortar is breaking between the bricks.

[adam7456]

The management policies seemed to work up to the point that they lowered the lake. The fishery has definately declined since then. I'm not sure that much can be done about it though. The water temp and oxygen level have more to with the problem then anything else and they will always put the safety of the dam before the needs of the fish.

Once the dam is finished and the lake raised back up to the regular level I do expect a fish explosion due to all the new cover and space. A couple years after they raise it back up the lake should be amazing. Until then not so much.

[Bobby Headrick]

The fish explosion will be in the form of largemouths and panfish,have seen tons of fry on the lake and lots of small largemouth, the lake being high has helped them. Stripers are a put/take fish as they do not breed here, so unless they restock the population wont grow, and with the talk of closing down hatcherys, well, then the question is" is the striper days about over for Cumberland?

[apb]

Agree with the above posters, not much is going to happen until the dam issues are resolved. I don't see anything that fish and wildlife can do until that happens. It would be a waste of money right now given that there is a good chance that any additional stripers they stock in Cumberland will end up dead before they reach trophy size.

Andrew

[Duayne]

I've decided to pretty much leave them alone. Maybe the only answer is to let those smaller fish make it through the hot weather and grow up for when the dam is fixed. The larger ones aren't going to fair well fished or not. But at least the smaller ones could stand a chance if left alone.

[HURRICANEBOB]

I don't blame the Corps of Engineers. The leaks had to be fixed, and bedrock faults can't be fixed and I doubt anticipated. The lower levels of water I think has had an impact and agree the really hot summers, extreme rains, and fishing pressure have all played a part, none of which I can hold the Corps to blame for. They are fighting a tough battle just to make sure water stays in the place. Fish like water.

This will sound crazy, but if we could keep 15-18 inch fish, just maybe some of the bigger fish would survive. Since the 15-18 class is the greatest population, thin the middle. I agree, don't make me throw back a fish that will die. Cull it, so I hit my limit, and have to stop fishing, meaning the big guy fish does not get harvested on that particular day.

[Duayne]

In a normal year, that's a valid argument. But these aren't normal. The bigger fish have taken hits the last two years. They will take a hit again this year. The very reason there are so many short fish is the lack of competition since the bigger classes have taken such a hit. The smaller fish can make it through the heat if left alone. And right now, the future years depends on those fish. I know there are a lot of people who don't want to hear this, but it's time to fish for something else. At least during the heat.

[coombro]

I don't blame the Corps of Engineers. The leaks had to be fixed, and bedrock faults can't be fixed and I doubt anticipated. The lower levels of water I think has had an impact and agree the really hot summers, extreme rains, and fishing pressure have all played a part, none of which I can hold the Corps to blame for. They are fighting a tough battle just to make sure water stays in the place. Fish like water.

This will sound crazy, but if we could keep 15-18 inch fish, just maybe some of the bigger fish would survive. Since the 15-18 class is the greatest population, thin the middle. I agree, don't make me throw back a fish that will die. Cull it, so I hit my limit, and have to stop fishing, meaning the big guy fish does not get harvested on that particular day.

The dam will never be fixed it will be a temporary solution til another problem arises.

[Jbyrd]

The fish explosion will be in the form of largemouths and panfish,have seen tons of fry on the lake and lots of small largemouth, the lake being high has helped them. Stripers are a put/take fish as they do not breed here, so unless they restock the population wont grow, and with the talk of closing down hatcherys, well, then the question is" is the striper days about over for Cumberland?

where have you seen all the fry? Most of the bass didn't get a chance to spawn . They went on the bed and the lake jumped 10 feet it held for one week they re-bedded and BAM up25 more feet. THEN swoosh sucked it out from under them. The only fry I have seen are shad fry and the gills are making hay with them...
As for the mass numbers of small stripers right now they are hurting the population TOO many competeing for the forage and the amount of oxygen that is available . SIX fish are harder to keep alive in a live well than one. SAME theory just on a larger scale...

[peter]

On the optimistic side I "hope" the following will have a bearing. Now you can check my post from last year and my optimistic take was wrong. I thought that last year would be about the same as the year before regarding fish kill...but it was worse. That was based on comparing the O2 and temp at all the levels from the year before and looking at the weather predictions. All this was similiar near the end of August but I think it stayed hotter longer. Maybe it was just worse by a week or two.

To my knowledge what is different this year... I know a fellow that watches the Wolf Creek releases regularly is that the water is being released through the turbines and not the sluice gates. Speaking in ball park numbers the turbine intakes are much higher than the sluice gates.(maybe 650 per the link below). The article does not say the intakes are at 650 just that at the initial proposed lake level of 650 the water would not reach the intakes.

http://nashvillecitypaper.com/conten...ng-floodwaters

Wherever the actual turbine intake is it is a lot higher than the sluice gates which are near the bottom. ...So if that is the case they are currently letting warmer water out as compared to last year. But if they do that all summer the trout will suffer below the dam...so who knows what they will do.

Last year they released some cold water from the Laurel sluice gates primarily to help with the cooling of the power plant up by Somerset but it was too late for the stripers (the week or Sept 8). That water takes a long time to get down to Wolf Creek Dam when not much is being released from Wolf. If they would release from Laurel about Aug 10 or 15 then that would help. Let's hope the guys at the power plant start screaming earlier this year. Do you work there or know anybody that does?

http://somerset-kentucky.com/local/x...ake-Cumberland

Now if that theory does not pan our my last bit of optimism is the growth rate of stripers. According to the link below they grow about 3 inches a year so those 21 to 23 inch fish will be 24 to 26 inches next year. Can anybody verify that? But that would be under normal conditions which we don't exactly have.

http://www.fishin.com/linked-files-p...ight-chart.pdf

Based on catches the larger fish choose cool water over O2 last year. Maybe that is what all the yo yo-ing was about. Maybe they had to. Which of the two evils is more fatal?

If we come out on the right end of all this (power plant cooling, trout in river, water flow, laurel needs, dam repair success) and all this balances in our favor, including the weather, maybe the survival rates will be better this year than last. It seems a lot of things need to fall into place.

Fingers and toes crossed.

[adam7456]

The fish explosion will be in the form of largemouths and panfish,have seen tons of fry on the lake and lots of small largemouth, the lake being high has helped them. Stripers are a put/take fish as they do not breed here, so unless they restock the population wont grow, and with the talk of closing down hatcherys, well, then the question is" is the striper days about over for Cumberland?

It initial fish explosion would be the bass and panfish but it will also improve the quality and numbers of shad. That would give the stipers more food to eat and they would grow bigger. They are put and take, I don't see the stocking of them stopped, there is too much revenue for the cities and states to lose.

I'm not a fish biologist but to it would seem that the best way to protect the stripers on Lake Cumberland is to actually reduce the size limit to say 15 inches, have it mandatory that any legal fish must be kept, and keep the 2 fish limit. Let's face it with the water temps as high as they are 80% to 90% of the stripers released are going to die. We see threads here all the time, caught 20 stipers but only had 1 keeper. Well 17 other stripers just died. If the size limit was reduced and mandatory to keep the legal fish, then it would be a loss of 2 stripers from the lake instead of 18. That leaves more stripers in the lake to try to make it through the hot summer and fish kill.

With the current regs all that I see happening is the large fish get taken or killed plus the smaller fish get thrown back and die. The end result being fewer stripers and the ones that remain are tiny. Looking back over the last 3 years you can see there has been a gradual decline in the size of the fish being caught during the May night bite. This year most of the posts here were about catching a lot of small fish and very few keepers.