After a dismal day Saturday in the OB&T TX with only one fish. Brett along with a wonderful guest of Mr. Grant Strickland and myself, tried our best to give Lanier a whooping! Instead it gave us one...LOL.

On a side note: We marked bunches of fish all morning and afternoon, with only having 3 fish on and two spit the hook at us.

Well Sunday Brett and I decided that enough is enough, and we would get on some fish if we took our time. So the morning was slow as expected, but not futal. We scored on two fish early and then went looking for big fish in the vast ocean.

We targeted 100' water or better and found some fish very deep in about 3 places. We then worked on them very slowly and ended up with 6 fish with two of them in the upper teens and one in the low twenties. The down side was that I lost a very big fish at about 11:00 This fish made a run with a very tight drag and 16# leader of 134' and I could never even turn the handle.
I knew this was going to end in the trees because I could not even gain an inch, and of course trees were near by, and I wasn't lucky enough for the fish to come up.

All in all take the good days when you can get them!!!

A good day indeed. Nice fish fella's!

Great to hear. Days like Saturday make us appreciate the good days I guess.

Good job Dano..It's supposed to be good fishing for numbers during the summer time since the majority of the biomass of fish should be in the lower 1/3rd of the lake...for the most part either we don't have good numbers or we are in the wrong place at the right time these days ;-)

I'm looking forward to hearing what the DNR has to say at the Oakwood Striper Club meeting on Tuesday evening since I missed the other 2 meetings.

Thanks! Jim, Clay, and Bill. Yes Bill the fishing has been very different the last few years. I am sure that they are aware that the numbers are down. Anthony expects the next few years to be better. Yes it is interesting to hear what they have to say regarding the up and coming years.

What is very troubling to me, is July and August is usually numbers from many different crks and bays from mid lake to south end creeks. This year, seems especially smaller schools in way more confined area's of the lake, rather than spread out lower lake wide.

We will talk at the meeting regarding what some of us fishermen think regarding these issue's. I look forward to seeing many of you guys there.

Anthony says the best way we fishermen can help, is to supply data to them, in the form of our personal creel data. So what would be benificial to them and ultamately us as end users. Would be an on line daily creel data from us fisherman, regarding how many caught, size and how many hours on the water to catch what we submit. If any of you have some idea's regarding how to do so would be a big help. It could be generic without names or fishing spots. This way some people that don't want to supply data such as this, might be more willing, if they felt they were not giving away there personal holes or names.

Before and during the drought a few years back the Lanier Striper Club and Ken Sturdivant started a program on his site where you could log that information. Back then the concerns were the same as what you are talking about now. Numbers were down and fishermen were getting concerned. Some folks didn't want to participate because they feared a few guys that had access to the data may have been using the data for their own personal use. Supposedly the data was given to the DNR when Reggie Weaver was monitoring Lanier.

Keep in mind that in order to form a useful trend on Lanier, you need years of samplings of data. Each year the percieved population of summer stripers on the south may change. I think there may be several reasons were not seing big schools. Population decline caused by pressure being the obvious. Lake stratification being more broad this year on the south end being another. I've seen more scattered fish this year than in previous years. Absolutely, not seeing big schools may be a concern this year, but it could be a blessing also.

I heard that it is extremely important for the 1" fish to be able to find food very soon after being stocked. Is there something that the fishing community can do to help improve the survivability of the newly stocked fish during May ?

it seemed there was very little that could be done to impact the survival rate. The biggest factor to survival seemed to be the water quality (DO levels and recent weather impact). What I heard was that they have no way to wait a day, week or month for conditions to be optimal. When they go, they go. I asked a few questions around the topic but didn't go to deep because as mentioned above, they just don't have the data. The question I was left wondering was that if they waited for optimal conditions before releasing the fish, would the survival rate be higher than the casualty rate caused by leaving them in the fishery longer.

The data was all very interesting but it seemed their thought was that they don't have enough of it. My thought was that they might have enough but weren't using it in the right ways. While you are watching the presentation, keep in mind that the charts can become confusing if you aren't the one looking at them on a daily basis, but 10 years of data should tell a story that allows action to be taken. The only action I heard from their data was to dump as many fish in as they can and hope for better survival next year.

Having said all of that, I don't grow fish for a living, but I do look at data day in and day out.

I think the biggest factor for the survival rate of fingerlings is water levels during and after the stocking. When we were in the drought a few years back, the small fingerlings had less of a chance for survival due to the lake being down 15-20 feet and the shoreline structure for the small stripers to forage and hide from predatory fish. When the levels came back up, the small fingerlings had all the new grass and shoreline structure to grow up in. I would say in part, the reason for the percieved drop in populations could have been caused by the drought and the loss of shoreline structure.

Back during the drought years, there wasn't nearly as much bait as we see today. When the lake levels came up, the spawns were incredible on Lanier and our other surrounding lakes. All of that new shoreline mean good survivability for bait and growing fish. I started seeing large clouds of small threads everywhere. I can remember coming down lake at West Point during the evening hours and seeing thousands of pods of threads across the glassed over lake. Same with Lanier, the bait was everywhere.

Water quality is always very good in May so I don't see water quality and DO levels being a factor during the stocking period and after unless we are in a drought period. I believe April/May is probably the optimal month for stocking under normal conditions. After stocking it's all up to Mother Nature; not much we can do to help them grow up.

If us fishermen are going to try and trend this sort of thing, we have to think "long term data", therefor a system has to be set up for long term data entry.

Jim,
That seems to point to a few positive possibilities worth exploring. COVER AND and the FOOD SOURCE for recently released 1" fingerlings.
As an example: Can additional habit be built to help the fingerlings survive that critical period immediately after stocking. Might mimic the shore cover you point to.
Tom S