By Capt. James McManus
The NCWRC held a meeting in May to give their views on the state of our local lakes. I truly appreciate the fact that they are starting to hear and see what we have been talking about for some time now. Just to review a little of what they presented, and as we all know, the walleye populations are down in every lake they discussed. The reasons are a combination of the introduction of the spotted bass, several years of bad natural recruitment, and most recently, the introduction of blueback herring. The other area they concentrated on was the decline and hybridization of our native smallmouth populations, both of these being caused by the spotted bass introduction. Spots, it turns out, love to make whoopee with smallmouth, same place, same time… Why not love the one you are with? While they are trying to fix the walleye population decline, there may not be much they can do for the smallies.
First, in the audience, there were experienced anglers, guides, and folks that spend way more time on the lakes than any of the wildlife folks. A lot of what was presented was old news to most. TVA has been showing these same results for over ten, maybe fifteen years, so I question why it took so long to address the issues. I know it takes time to compile and collate data, but ten to fifteen years is a long time. I do want to look at the positives. Walleye stocking is surely one of those. I was not aware of the difficulties of raising walleye and I feel like they are really trying as hard as possible to remedy the problem. They are faced with budget constraints, rearing limitations and demands from other sectors of our fishing populations, namely the trout anglers. This isn’t a bad thing, they are a huge, viable and economically important collection of folks and, geographically, these mountains are the only places they can be sustained, so I understand the importance of catering first to them. So, the good short-term news is that the stockings are going to increase and, with new methods, hopefully a fishable population will return. I do question some of their interpretation of the data presented. The only lake that had any sort of natural reproduction of walleye was Hiawassee. It has all the same mitigating circumstances as its sister lake, Fontana. The lone exception is that Hiawassee has a good population of stripers. My contention is that the stripers are holding back the blueback population just enough so that there is the continuation of natural reproduction of walleye. Why not stock Fontana with stripers at the same time and you don’t really have anything to lose. It was stated that they wanted to wait and see if the walleye stocking was enough, but five years of study, then five more to stock stripers puts the finished product ten years down the road and that don’t get it. STOCK NOW!
The other main issue addressed dealt with the smallmouth decline. There is no magic wand here, other than future stocking of pure strain smallies. What would help, and was suggested, was a removal of the size limit on bass, not numbers, just size, so that more of the small spots would be removed. We have been suggesting this for years and don’t appear any closer to reality, but combined with an educational bulletin for releasing pure strain smallies, it couldn’t hurt. There were also suggestions for restrictions on possession of smallies on Appalachia, which would help, and restrictions for fishing running water during spawning runs of smallies and walleye. I hope I don’t seem too critical of our wildlife folks, but just want what is best for our lakes and anglers. Let Raleigh know what you think, after all, they work for us and they also want what is best, so, again, thank you for addressing our concerns and use us as resources for help or information. Later, Capt. James
Capt. James McManus is the Owner of 153 Charters. Give him a call for a great day of boat fishing!