Willard, do you remember?

[WestFork]

Does anyone here remember the Green Sunfish boom on Willard many years back? I believe it was 1998 or 1999, maybe 2000. The lake was at full pool. From the boat, we would work the South and West dikes casting 3" white curly tails into the rocks. It was literally one after another! They weren't super big, but they weren't small either, nice tug on light tackle. If you didn't get a fish or bite on nearly every cast, you'd either have lost your plastic or broke off in the rocks. It was that fast. We caught them this way many times over that summer and the next.

I remember one night the challenge was to see who could get to 100 first. I don't remember who won but I know all three of us in the boat exceeded the century mark. I'm not even joking, I've never seen anything like it since. One summer was off the charts like that, the following summer was pretty good and then nothing ever since. Someone here has to remember this? I tell people and they think I'm crazy.

[tightline]

Not only do I remember the days with tons of sunfish. I remember going to the Marina in the mid 80's and ice fishing. It was fast and furious for bluegill and crappie. We would literally fill up 5 gallon buckets with good sized fish for the smoker. It was some of my fondest memories with my Grandpa.

I think the big change with Willard is the water levels. If the water goes down there is almost zero cover for those fish and the predators just gorge on them in the mud flats.

When the water is in the rocks year around there is far more places for all fish to hide and forage.

I would love to have a day with my young son that was like those days I had as a kid.
It was my first exposure to ice fishing and boy was it fun.

[TubeDude]

[#0000FF]It's all a part of the shad-wiper continuum. In the days BS (before shad), crappies and small sunfish were the primary forage species for the predators (catfish and walleyes). The forage species lived in and around the rocks and the predators usually stayed close to the rocks where the groceries were. Since shad have become the main forage species...and travel around the lake...the predators (including wipers) stay more out in the open lake.

Shad were first planted about 1990...and wipers about 4 years later. By the end of the decade the shad were so abundant they were filter-feeding a lot of the zooplankton out of the lake...food needed by baby crappies and sunfish to grow to their next levels. The numbers of crappies and sunfish took a drop.

The drop in crappie and sunfish numbers were even greater because of the increasing number of wipers. Wipers can only feed on shad for a few months right after the shad spawn...because gizzard shad grow very fast...as much as six to seven inches by late fall. So wipers, walleyes and catfish had to feed on surviving sunfish, perch and crappies when there were no edible sized shad.

So the shad were limiting the number of small sunfish by slurping up all the zooplankton...and the wipers were eating far more small sunfish than the walleyes and catfish together ever did.

Add into that the drought years from 2000 to 2004, with super low water levels, and the little tykes had no place to hide from the predators.

I used to catch a lot of greenies, going back to the 1970s. In those days it was legal to use them for bait...dead of course. But spending a little time to catch a dozen or so greenies along the edges of the south marina channel...before dragging them along the dike...would usually score me an easy limit of catfish and walleye. And in those days there were a lot of bigger walleyes and catfish.

Biggest green sunfish I ever caught from Willard was probably not over about 6 inches. But the ones around 4 inches were plentiful...and great bait. I can't remember catching ANY greenies in the past 10 years...since shad and wipers became a part of the Willard ecology. A lot fewer bluegills too. And a lot fewer crappies...but some good ones.
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