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Striped Bass Predication on Crappie
●Striped Bass Predication on Crappie
●Dismissing Myths About Striped Bass
●●●
Research conducted through the
Alabama Department of Conservation and Natural
Resources (ADCNR) and Auburn University has shown that striped bass are not
feasting on crappie and may even be expanding fishing options on Weiss Lake.
For the past eight years Maceina has been examining crappie reproduction on
Weiss Lake. He has found that lower angler catches in the early 1990s were
caused by poor crappie reproduction in the late 1980s due to drought and lower
lake levels.
Ample production of young crappie occurred in 1990, 1993, 1994 and 1996 and
crappie fishing is now thriving again at Weiss Lake, as is fishing for
largemouth bass and stripes. Biologists also examined the stripes' eating
habits. Maceina helped identify the prey items in captured striped bass and
found that crappie are rarely eaten by stripes. So far, some 440 stripes have
been sampled from Weiss Lake, and of the 2,500 total prey items found in the
stripes' stomachs, only six were crappie.
"Those six crappie constitute a tiny fraction of the total prey items found in
the fish we sampled," said Smith. He noted that 94 percent of the prey found in
the stomachs of the stripers was shad.
http://www.ag.auburn.edu/aaes/webpress/1998/stripedbass.htm
MORE ON STRIPED BASS AND CRAPPIE
One of the lakes in which striped bass have been stocked and are now naturally
reproducing in is Weiss Lake in Alabama.
The lake may also be the most famous
crappie lake in the state.
Local guides and resort owners promote Weiss Lake as
"The Crappie Capitol of the World."
As good as the crappie fishing is, local
fishermen began expressing concern that naturally reproducing stripers were
harming the crappie population.
They feared that the stripers were feeding on
the crappie and/or competing with them for food.
To answer the question, Alabama biologists conducted a study on the food habits
of the lake's stripers and the condition of the crappie population.
They used
gill nets to capture 463 striped bass over a 2-year period and used trap nets to
catch a large number of crappie over a 10-year period.
Of the 463 striped bass stomachs, 355 had 2,699 food items in them. Shad made up
2,522 (93.4%) of the items, followed by 6 crappie, 5 sunfish (bream), 3 minnows,
2 gaspergou, and 1 crawfish. Only 160 of the food items were too-digested to be
identified. Clearly, the stripers were not feeding on crappie to any great
degree. However, stripers could still have been impacting crappie by competing
with them for food.
To answer that question, the biologists compared crappie caught before 1993,
when stripers first began naturally reproducing in any numbers, to crappie taken
after 1993. No clear pattern of slower growth was found for either period. The
biologists compared crappie length to weight for both periods, as an indication
of their condition or "chunkiness". Crappies from the period after 1993 were
actually heavier for their length than those before 1993.
Other studies have
shown that young-of-the-year crappie feed on entirely different food items than
young of the year striped bass.
The biologists concluded that striped bass were having no negative effect on
crappies. They pointed out that crappie populations in Weiss Lake, as they do in
many places, can vary tremendously from year to year, depending on the success
of previous spawns.
These results were similar to other studies conducted in Oklahoma, Virginia,
South Carolina, Florida, Arkansas, Utah and Tennessee
that concluded that sport fish are not a major prey item of striped bass.
ADWFF was also concerned that the influx of striped bass would impact the native
sport fishes through competition for food. Data collected by Auburn University
and ADWFF personnel have shown no adverse affects on the crappie or largemouth
bass populations in Weiss Lake.
Also, ADWFF has documented movement of these naturally reproduced striped bass
from northwest Georgia all the way down the Coosa River to Lake Jordan.
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