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  1. Member
    Join Date
    Oct 2022
    Location
    Marion, Indiana
    Posts
    34
    #21
    Quote Originally Posted by idbefishing View Post
    so do y’all fish in the river with only kayak? How far up stream from the lake is the “better” fishing? Could the river fish be resident fish and don’t migrate back and forth to the lake? If they do migrate then I’d think the fishing in the lake is good in the fall/winter just like lake Shafer
    Where the big smallmouth are being caught in the summer - it's even difficult to float a kayak through much of the river's shallow course. It's that shallow up river. We wade and hip waders are that's required. Four feet of water is considered deep with a great deal of it being far shallower, and that four feet or water is rare and it's most often in the form of small holes or cuts in the bedrock, also some washouts along the shoreline, etc. In the winter they drop the lake 25 feet, so some really extreme water level changes that cause the lake to lose something like 60-65% of it's summer water volume.

  2. Member
    Join Date
    Oct 2022
    Location
    Marion, Indiana
    Posts
    34
    #22
    SUPER IMORTANT! (Read to the end.)

    A 16-20” smallmouth bass, or bigger, that smallmouth has roughly lived 8-10 years. This means that it has had to survive in an agreeable environment. This also means that it has had to survive 8-10 winter draw-down cycles. And when these fish migrate up river in the summer and there are lots of them, well, then what is that telling us? It’s telling us that the lake environment, at least through the winter draw-down, is suitable for the healthy existence of smallmouth bass.

    Declining numbers? Maybe, but then why are we seeing increasingly better smallmouth fishing in the river in the summer in terms of both quality and numbers?
    Here again, these fish have to be coming from the lake, a reduced pool of water where they have survived six-months out of the year for a number of years. So, is winter draw-down really a problem? Apparently not.

    Food? Here again these are healthy fish that have survived 8-10 years or more in the lake and river and I have yet to catch a smallmouth from either location that appeared to be starving to death, actually quite the opposite. So, apparently there’s plenty of food.

    So if it’s not the environment and it’s not a shortage of food then why do the smallmouth seem to be so scarce in the lake during the summer? Sure, that food also migrates up river during the summer but not all of it so I think we can rule this out given that there’s apparently enough food remaining in the lake to support populations of other healthy species.

    So here’s where I think we’re at….I think those fish that are being caught upriver in the summer need to be tagged and tracked so we can finally see exactly how they are interacting with their environment. But there is also a problem with this because I don’t think and angler can do it, and here’s why.

    Time. Let’s say I’m standing in the middle of the river and I catch an 18” smallmouth that needs weighed, measured, tagged, and then released. This means that I have to transport that fish back to shore so I can go through the entire process, that smallmouth remaining out of the water for an extended period of time. I’m just not sure that all of this can be accomplished without over-stressing that fish, especially when that fish has already been stressed while being hooked and landed. And this angler participation has been discussed and considered, which I am more then willing to do, but I just don’t think it can be done due to the above circumstances. Last year I tried to take two big smallmouth back to shore just to measure them and to get them on film and when I went to release them I nearly had to perform CPR on them just to get them to float upright again. So for those of you who criticize my absence of on camera documentation this is why that absence exist.

    So the state is going to have to do all of this, not the angler. It would different if that angler had a boat and a live-well but that simply isn’t possible upriver. The state is already setup to deal with this shallow water tagging of fish so they are going to have to be the one’s to do it if we’re actually going to take steps in trying to figure out how these smallmouth are interacting with their Lake/River environment. I wish I could do it but I just don’t see how it can be done? And that’s too bad because I’m on the river a lot and I catch a lot of adult smallmouth.

    So this is why Tyler suggested that we do a river walk through those areas that I frequently fish, so he can map those areas where these adult fish are being caught in the summer with all of the above in mind. So, the sooner we do this walk around the sooner he can start to layout a plan of attack for doing the tagging and tracking next summer. I just want to let folks know that there are some things already in the works and that it appears that an effort is going to eventually be made. So have patience, maybe by next summer the ball will be rolling and maybe by next fall or the following summer we’ll start to see some of that important data.…………….Cheers!

    PS: It’s vital that we, “as a group” keep pressing for this tagging and tracking project (if you're not already a member to the group then I suggest you join. @ Mississinewa Smallmouth Conservation Group on Facebook.) From this we will finally learn how smallmouth are interacting in the Mississinewa lake/river environment and there will be no more guessing. And from this we can start to make improvements if required. It is a, “MUST HAPPEN!” The kettle is hot, fella's. Let's not allow it to cool off.

  3. Member
    Join Date
    Oct 2022
    Location
    Marion, Indiana
    Posts
    34
    #23
    Take a look at this fish, notice the indented forehead and sharp taper towards the mouth. In the past couple of years I'm catching more of these strangers and I'm just not sure what they are? Of the nine members of the black bass family I can't seem to place this fish among them, though a couple are close. What do you think?
    DSCN4542.jpg

  4. idbefishing
    Guest
    #24
    his momma was a crappie

  5. Member
    Join Date
    Jun 2012
    Location
    Valparaiso, IN
    Posts
    7,088
    #25
    Interesting fish. Potential genetic anomaly? I actually caught a walleye that looked like that on the lake I live on.

    Quote Originally Posted by Last Smallmouth Hunter View Post
    Take a look at this fish, notice the indented forehead and sharp taper towards the mouth. In the past couple of years I'm catching more of these strangers and I'm just not sure what they are? Of the nine members of the black bass family I can't seem to place this fish among them, though a couple are close. What do you think?
    DSCN4542.jpg

    2005 Champion 198 DC Elite
    2005 Mercury Optimax-225hp (Serial#1B073011)

  6. Member
    Join Date
    Oct 2022
    Location
    Marion, Indiana
    Posts
    34
    #26
    Quote Originally Posted by champ93 View Post
    Interesting fish. Potential genetic anomaly? I actually caught a walleye that looked like that on the lake I live on.
    From what I have been able to research, these are not native to the Mississinewa water shed and only smallmouth and largemouth have ever been stocked. The other thing is that this isn't a one-off as I caught maybe a half-dozen of them last year, all of them the same size, about 2lb, which tells me that they are all of the same age. I do know that the area biologist is going to look into it a bit so we'll see? And if I have to actually catch him one next year, well, we'll just have to do that for him....lol

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