01-10-2022, 04:33 PM
(01-10-2022, 03:02 PM)PBH Wrote: Once again -- and we've been saying this for years -- big fish are the result of FAST GROWTH, not old age.
Fish are "indeterminate" growers, unlike mammals which are "determinate" growers.
While all of you are excited about this study, go back and read some of the past studies. Things haven't changed much. Attached is a study of lake trout at Fish Lake from 1989 - 2002. Good stuff.
I found the following of particular interest:
"The consumption of rainbow trout by lake trout is particularly troubling. Madsen found that by volume rainbow trout comprised 67 % of the lake trout diet. In Fish Lake there are an estimated 1,100 (499-2,519) lake trout > 20 inches, each consuming somewhere between 1% and 4% percent of their body weight per day (Eby et al. 1995 and Rottiers 1993). At these rates, it requires 8,000 to 24,000 pounds of forage per year to maintain the lake trout population. The UDWR currently stocks approximately 29,000 pounds of rainbow trout annually. To reduce the impact of lake trout predation on rainbow trout, the mean size of stocked rainbow trout was increased from 5 to 10 inches."
It is apparent that rainbow planting has been a feeding program for the lake trout. Switching to planting larger rainbows means more rainbows survive, but the lake trout then struggle to find something to eat. I sure wish the bucket biologists would not have planted yellow perch in Fish Lake. This introduction has definitely been devastating to the fishery.