panfish vs other fish

[tacklebox7FF]

yeah.. i agree. and you have to remember which species is more fished in minnesota too... can anyone guess?

[tacklebox7FF]

yeah.. i agree. and you have to remember which species is more fished in minnesota during the winter months... can anyone guess?

[Nick Kuhn]

Here you have a better chance getting info from a muskie guy than info on a good gill bite. Bad thing is during ice, 1 shack draws 2 that draws 4 ect. Sometimes for fun we'll set up somplace that nobody ever fished and like clockwork soon theres 10 guys around us. I'm not shy either if theres a bite on eyes going I'll share if it's a main lake bite, trolling ect. I may not say how many colors or how far back I'm running or the hot bait but will steer most in the right direction. Although I have a dark side to me and I'll swap out rods and tie on odd ball baits if guys know I'm on fish and sneeking peeks in the boat when I'm coming off, most often its always the same handfull of guys. Funny how many guys run out and buy what I had tied on and I have never had a hit on any of those baits.

I know you can appreciate this. Once muskie fishing out near a landing we hooked up with but lost a nice fish on a white/nickle marabou bucktail. A boat nearby literally ran in, drove the mile to the bait shop and came back out with similar lures. I couldn't help but laugh...

[half-dutch]

Overharvested panfish lakes recover their size structure when the harvest level declines. That is the reason so many lakes are cyclical in panfish size. The panfishmen quit coming and the panfish population recovers the overharvested top size.

Virtually all the stunted panfish studies come from farm pond like sizes where that definitely applies but once a lake gets big enough to have large panfish without the special management of farm ponds, they will restore their own size structure if given a chance. There are currently a number of lakes in Ottertail county that are being managed with a very restricted panfish harvest, including a couple with a 10" crappie minimum. It will be very informative when the data on those gets compiled and published.

BTW farm ponds do not support both quality bluegill and crappie populations at the same time either, although most lakes of any size will. You stock one or the other. You also manage a farm pond for either large bass or large bluegills, you don't get that both ways either, except in the rarest of occasions and then usually only for a very few years at the very beginning of a pond's stocking when everything grows at a fantastic rate. By the time you get over maybe a hundred acres in this part of the country the pond data fails. Any farm pond management that is successful over time involves very careful management of what is harvested from it, anyway.

Panfish management always boils down to resticted, managed harvest in this part of the country because it takes the better part of a decade to grow a 10" bluegill this far north, and close to that for a 1 pound crappie. They have to have a long enough life expectancy to make the size.

As far as copy cat fishing goes on the ice, what copiers look for is a pile of fish laying around the hole. My buddy and I caught hundreds of crappies this winter on a lake right out in front of the public as open as one could get, but put them all back down the hole, and we had zip/zero company all winter. One could actually park within about a hundred yards of our holes. We were literally seen by hundreds of people an outing, so close on the shore that we could hold conversations with them, but our holes didn't even get reused, and no body cut any new ones around them either. There was even a news camera crew that came out one time, although all they saw me catch were potato chips. Most times we could have sorted out limits of crappies over 8", too. Mark up one for catch and release. We had a blast right down to singing out counts a couple of times, and with nothing on the ice, we got no company.

There aint nothing like crappies when THE bite is on. It is possible to catch dozens per fishman an hour. We had that nearly a dozen times this winter and we had it all to ourselves every time. And those fish are all still there, too, minus what the muskies have eaten in the mean time. You advertise your harvest and you will get company. It is not truer on any other game fish than it is on crappies, crappies of nearly any size.

[half-dutch]

When it comes down to predator food preference, it all boils down to what is available.

Muskies and pike in natural settings are cannibals from the very beginning, when their first fish meals are other members of their own hatching brood, because very nearly nothing else is available in the beginning. They orient to "perch" size prey with the first fish they eat which aren't perch. Both naturally spawned pike and muskies remain eager cannibals all their lives.

Hatchery fish are very carefully and constantly sorted to size because otherwise they will eat each other regardless of how well they are fed. Once stocked they target what they can catch with far less shape preference than truly wild fish show. They do not bring the intensely learned experience of eating and being eaten by their own, which my guess is where prey shape is first really imprinted on developing fry; so stocked muskies target differently than truly wild fish. One of the reasons that fry stocking usually fails with muskies is almost certainly that they turn on each other very quickly when they have to fend for themselves or they simply starve. They have not had the longer period of acclimatization to the presence of others of their own kind that the larger stocked fish have had in the hatchery nor the early and constantly reenforced orientation to either practice or avoid active cannibalism; so when they do go cannibal they do it more quickly than fish kept longer at the hatchery and with less caution than totally wild fry. So too few survive to make the stocking effort and expense worthwhile.

Naturally spawned fish have no associated intervals at all. They only come together in such larger sizes that are safe from predation by each other and then only loosely at best and often especially in muskies they stay solitary. In the beginning the survivors scatter almost immediately. Those that don't never have a chance. That is quite different by necessity in a hatchery. Hatchery staff have to sort musky and pike size constantly or they will end up with only a very few, very fat fry out of any spawning.

I guarantee you that stocked muskies around here actively and regularly target bluegills and crappies, and have seen them bypass offered fully lively suckers to wait for a hooked panfish. Every other panfisherman, I know says the same thing, regardless of what studies of truly wild fish may seem to indicate.

Select your musky presentations according to whether you are fishing stocked populations or natural ones. There is a difference in prey targeting, especially on smaller waters with heavy bluegill and crappie populations. It would probably also help to study how differently bluegills and crappies swim from the "perch" shapes to hone your presentations.

[tacklejunkie]

I like big water fishing, myself. Both Superior and LOTW.

But if you want to watch me giggle like a schoolgirl, get me on a bunch of decent sized bluegills or crappies