oahe stocking.

[Ned]

Talked to a GFP guy this weekend, 1800 is the rough number that are being stocked into Oahe each day, not a total number They are just dumping them off at boat ramps up and down the river from what i was told this weekend.

Lets see lost a couple billion smelt in the flood last summer. Stocking a few thousand adult shad, its not going to make much differnce. The fish will get to the point that they will eat anyting they can and this will include the entire young of the year game fish from this and last years spawn. This has happend before in lakes like Mille Lacs when they loose the bait. In my opion they need to raise the limit up like they did last time. Do it right now becuase until the bait fish rebound they need to get some of the bigger game fish out of their to help with that. I wounder if you could some how trap the smelt below the dam in sharp and dump them back in Oahe. I have heard a number of 2 billion smelt lost last year. If you assume an adult smelt weighs 2oz we are looking at 120,000 metric tons of bait lost. No easy answers but unless they get alot of the adult fish out of there it is going to take ay least 10 years to get the bait back to what it was before the flood. Also making the issue more complex is that their is way more bass and pike in their than the last time this happend, which we all know are eating machines. I fished Mobridge last week and I caught a skinny 19" walleye that weighed 1lb 6oz. I also fished Bitter lake last week and caught a 19" walleye that weighed 3lb 4oz and looked like a football. The SD game and fish needs to up the limit and get some of the game fish out of their while they still have some girth left on them. Also I think fisherman should take a limit of pike out the river all they can and pickle them or what ever. I know I did and the pickle nothern taste great. I remember fishing from shore back in the 1970's for catfish and when you would catch a walleye it would look like a snake with a big head and a skinny body. Then Dale Hinager the Director on North Dakota Game and Fish Stock smelt in lake Sauk. up in ND and they ran thru Garrision dam and got into lake Oahe and the fishing took off. If I remember correctly the state of South Dakota was not in favor of smelt stocking in the Missouri River System. So everyone that fishes the Missouri system has the late Dale Henager to thank.

I have enclosed a link to information on Dale Hanager and what he did for fisheries in ND and indirectly in SD

http://legacy.inforum.com/specials/c...n3/week19b.htm

[dmel]

Dude the fish are skinny as a rail on lake sharpe. Them smelt kept right on going!

[mtelkhunter]

Fished Sharpe around the west bend area, caught a ton of fish, with many small skinny fish already. 4 of the 16 that 4 of us kept were females still holding eggs. Any idea what this means for the future of the fishery? I'm assuming that since the females held eggs they found either no place to spawn or were in no shape to spawn, any thoughts?

[MrStarnes1]

Originally Posted by mtelkhunter

Fished Sharpe around the west bend area, caught a ton of fish, with many small skinny fish already. 4 of the 16 that 4 of us kept were females still holding eggs. Any idea what this means for the future of the fishery? I'm assuming that since the females held eggs they found either no place to spawn or were in no shape to spawn, any thoughts?

i was told this could have been due to the weather changes right around the spawning time

the water warmed up faster than normal this year and then we had a strong cold front for a few weeks which dropped water temps again. screwed up the spawn for some walleye as i was explained to by a conservation officer a month or so ago. he claimed that it happens every year, sometimes worse than others though

[MykeG]

I think it may be a little early in the season to be claiming that the baitfish are gone and that the walleyes in oahe are going to starve to death. I think walleyes are still eating a lot of insects right now which I would guess is a low energy gain for the amount of energy spent. I would also suspect that per square mile that oahe produces less insects than say a lake from ne south dakota that is shallow and fertile with a predominatly soft bottom. I'm sure the gf&p is comparing current walleye length to weight ratios with historical data and will adjust harvest accordingly if necessary. With the loss of smelt obviously the walleyes are going to have to target different prey but I'm not sure this is an overnight transition nor do I think all walleyes in oahe eat only smelt, in fact I might wager a guess that some rarely do. I also feel the term "skinny" is thrown around a little loosely. Stuff a few 5 inch perch in the belly of a "skinny" walleye and see if that walleye becomes fat. I think if were still talking about "skinny" walleyes come november, then there is a problem. I personally have faith that the GF&P is on top of it. Just my .02 cents.

[Gale Johnson]

Originally Posted by MykeG

I think it may be a little early in the season to be claiming that the baitfish are gone and that the walleyes in oahe are going to starve to death. I think walleyes are still eating a lot of insects right now which I would guess is a low energy gain for the amount of energy spent. I would also suspect that per square mile that oahe produces less insects than say a lake from ne south dakota that is shallow and fertile with a predominatly soft bottom. I'm sure the gf&p is comparing current walleye length to weight ratios with historical data and will adjust harvest accordingly if necessary. With the loss of smelt obviously the walleyes are going to have to target different prey but I'm not sure this is an overnight transition nor do I think all walleyes in oahe eat only smelt, in fact I might wager a guess that some rarely do. I also feel the term "skinny" is thrown around a little loosely. Stuff a few 5 inch perch in the belly of a "skinny" walleye and see if that walleye becomes fat. I think if were still talking about "skinny" walleyes come november, then there is a problem. I personally have faith that the GF&P is on top of it. Just my .02 cents.

I read on another site that the g&f frequently stocks a western sd lake of 8000 acres with only 20 to 30 adult shad to get the proper amount of bait, so trying to create localized food in the locations that they stocked 1700 shad might create more food than one thinks and fast. Not that it will solve the problem but it might help. Hopefully there is a little more diverse habitat than the post 97 crash.

The trip that i took the first of June the fish where definatley not the oahe footballs of years past, we will see how they look next weekend.

Time will tell and i have faith in the sd g&f, the corp on the other hand would be a whole different post that would be nuked right away

I grew up on the Missouri river and I just remember what the fish look like before ND put the smelt in the system. The thing you need to remember abought shad is they cannot take a hard winter. Every one can hope for the best but just wait and see what happens based on what the walleyes have always looked like in the Missouri river if they did not have smelt to feed on. I remember fishing catfish in the Mossouri river before they put smelt in and no one fished walleyes and if you caught one it was looked like a snake. So with our the smelt it is going to be hard times again for the fishery.

[eyewinder]

Many of you may have already seen this. I found it on another fishing website. If you take the time to view all 40-some minutes of it, you can replace rumor with South Dakota Game & Fish biologist's presentation in your personal data banks.

Pretty fascinating stuff, although estimating smelt numbers is obviously an inexact science. I believe the numbers that you'll see in the video are in the hundreds of million, rather than billions.

http://oahetv.com/SP032012GFP.htm

There was no spawning run of smelt this year on lake Oahe this spring. When a species does not try to reproduce they are not there simple as that.