Smalls |
04-24-2015 09:14 AM |
Quote:
Originally Posted by MathGeek
(Post 750796)
In general, anglers tend to focus too much on the species they want to catch, rather than on health of the ecosystem and the overall food web.
Stocking 500,000 Florida LMB won't result in much unless there is a healthy food web in place to feed them well so that they grow quickly.
The Calcasieu River is a complicated ecosystem with a lot of management challenges, as described here: http://www.wlf.louisiana.gov/sites/d...pdate_2014.pdf
Hopefully, the length and growth study will become available in 2015, as promised by LDWF. Having genetics for large, fast growing bass is only half the requirement. All these bass need to eat, and the Calcasieu food web may not be ample to feed them.
It's something of a self-correcting problem. If the adult bass in there are now are not well fed, they will eat the fry and move the system closer to balance with very few of the fry surviving to compete as adults.
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If past stocking efforts are any indication of the concern for the health of the ecosystem, then there isn't much concern. They spent 6 years stocking almost 3 million striped bass in the Calcasieu, a species that is not native to those waters. It even says so in the report.
Also, someone can't add. Table 17 shows stocking history. I count over 2.5 million in 1994 and 1996 alone, yet the table only shows 2.07 million.
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While I respect your opinion on the topic MG, is there anything that would lead you to believe the ecosystem could not support this stocking? I see nothing from this report, other than the poor status in regard to wildlife and fisheries propagation, that leads me to think it could not support it. I'd be more curious as to why they are stocking now, considering this report states that natural recruitment has been sufficient enough to make stocking inefficient. Could the bass population be too low to hold other species in check?
I'm by no means a fisheries biologist, so I have no idea why they decided to stock the river, although I would suspect they had planned it in advance since it happened only weeks after stocking the Mermentau. Common sense would lead me to believe they determined it was needed, but then again, was the stocking of striped bass needed?
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