Thread: Rock Bass ??
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Old 07-13-2019, 01:12 PM   #94
Top-Water
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Quote:
Originally Posted by MRD View Post
Caught 20 rock bass in an hour off my dock near the Cattle Landing dock. They are just about the only thing we now catch. We need a tournament to reduce the population. The winner is the person who fills the most five gallon buckets full of rock bass.
Not sure how serious you are but it has been done before. Perhaps some of the folks that are familiar with Lake Winnisquam that can remember back to the lake 60' and early 70's and the fleets of Boston Whaler type boats back then that the state sent out with copper sulfate to help make the waters *appearance* look nicer ended up killing just about all the sports fish and the ecology that supported there food supply.

It's my understand for a while there were (state?) sponsored catch and kill tournaments targeting white perch. While I don't remember the actual tournaments from back then and the details, I do remember the fleets of boats dragging the burlap bags and certainly remember the millions of white perch schooling in the bays every night in the summer. When water skiing back then you might go thru schools a 1/2 mile or better in length when they were visibly on top of the water.

I have heard, but never eye witnessed myself personally they would remove dump truck loads of them while also restocking the sports fish species to reduce the food supply competition.

It's a dam shame that they seem to be taking over the lake. However there have been some stories out of Lake Sunapee that also has a rock bass problem and that some of there efforts to control them have been successful by encouraging taking of them and sponsoring removal completions.

On the good side what ever was done years ago to restore the sports fishery seemed to have worked on Winnisquam, -real- 4 pound small mouth were common in the late 90's for a while. A friend of mine with a prominent lakes region name caught an 11 pound lake trout weighed at "Sarges" a real monster.
So some how things "seemed" to get fixed for a while. On the bad side rock bass are all so in Winnisquam now and fishing seems to be on the decline.


Sadly it's a very complicated problem and any proposed solution can't be fixed on social media. It has to be very well thought so we don't make some new mistake.
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