Kwin, I have to believe the large population of Stripers are hurting the forage population. Would it help if you raised the Striper limit to 25 and made it a requirement that you keep all Stripers you catch up to 25 until the lake gets back to normal levels? We know they're still there. We can see them by the hundreds puddling along the service eating small midges.
The short answer to raising the limit is no. The stats below collected from anglers surveys since 2014 show anglers average not even 1/3 of the current possession limit with 75% average harvest rate over that time period. Raising the limit would not reduce the population significantly more than it already is being reduced. Sorry about the data being crunched up.
Lake Skinner Striped Bass Stats From Angler Surveys
Year--# SB Anglers--#SB Caught--#caught per angler--Harvest Rate
2014-- 214-- 398-- 1.86-- 90%
2015-- 266-- 483-- 1.82-- 73%
2016-- 352-- 590-- 1.68-- 57%
2017-- 523-- 2504-- 4.79-- 73%
2018-- 502-- 1456-- 2.90-- 85%
2019-- 222-- 442-- 1.99-- 75%
2020-- 546-- 2321-- 4.25-- 61%
2021-- 513-- 1967-- 3.83-- 85%
Total # SB Anglers 3138
Total # SB Caught 10161
Average caught per angler 3.24
Average Harvest Rate 75%
So, if I understand correctly Kwin, judging by your survey of forage fish, we can expect an uneventful fall bite due to lack of forage for the gamefish, correct? Also , looking at your harvest data, it seems like the percentage of harvesting is higher in percentage with less anglers and fish caught last year compared to 2 years ago. Do you have a theory to why very little stripers were caught in 2019?
I've not seen any evidence of adequate "pelagic" forage species, that anything in the lake could eat, in any of the last 3-4 electrofishing surveys. This biggest absence is I've only collected 22 bluegill over the last 2 spring surveys. Bluegill are typically very productive spawners, so their absence is concerning. They appear to be wiped out and not carrying over into the following year and/or the numbers of juveniles is reduced because recently established quagga mussels/gizzard shad are competing for planktonic resources. There has been an 80% reduction in the number of bluegill and small LMB since 2007 with the establishment of quagga mussels. Areas that should be loaded with bluegill/small bass (the dam rip rap) are pretty much empty. The lake is top heavy with predators eating anything and everything they can, which are far, far less than they were. Years of 98-99% C&R of LMB and the intermittent abundance of striped bass also isn't helping, creating an out of balance fishery.