It's kinda funny. When others can't catch fish and complain, it must be because conditions changed and they just aren't good enough fisherman to get on them.
But when some more confident peeps can't catch fish, it must be because the sky is falling and all the fish have packed up and gone somewhere else.
Big Lake is a hard place to fish. Even experience doesn't always provide the right recipe for all the curve balls this lake throws.
Drawing conclusions about the health of the estuary from a string of unproductive fishing trips is unwarranted, regardless of the skill of the angler. There are just too many other places the fish could be, and too many valid reasons the fish could be right under you but not buying what you are selling.
This is why the most scientifically valid stock assessments use fishery independent sampling methods. Nets are placed at random locations throughout the estuary, and many, many net locations are used over a long period of time to arrive at a reasonable first order approximation of fish populations. Even this level of scientific effort and careful sampling protocol often yields error bars on the order of 50% for population numbers.
Reactionary fishery management because we're catching fewer fish than last year really isn't any better science than the non-sense pushed by CCA.
Opening the weirs does enhance the food supply for the fish in the lake, and the more days the weirs are open, the happier and healthier and fatter the fish will be. In the short term, the more days a year the weirs are open, the more fish there will be. But in the long term, you're trading a real increase on the order of 20% over a few years but sacrificing the long term (10+ years later) potential of the fishery by 50% or more.
Opening the weirs really does more in terms of making the fish predictable and easy to catch than it does in actually increasing the number and health of the fish.
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